IAG Firemark Ventures partner UpGuard solidifies vision in third party risk management space

UpGuard, the third-party risk and attack surface management platform, announced today that the company has completed a $19 million ($25 million AUD) Series B-1 funding round with participation by existing investors IAG - Australia's largest general insurer, Pelion Venture Partners, Square Peg Capital and August Capital to accelerate the development of the UpGuard product and global expansion. This Series B-1 round brings UpGuard's total funding to $45 million ($59 million AUD).

UpGuard is a cybersecurity platform that prevents data breaches by helping businesses assess and monitor the risk of their third-party vendors and protect against data leaks.

As businesses adopt digital, we see more ways that UpGuard can play a role in making our customers' digital world safer.

Scott Gunther

IAG Firemark Ventures Managing Partner

UpGuard's world class team of cyber researchers and analysts are known for securing over 2 billion sensitive data leaks for a range of organisations including Facebook, the Republican National Committee, Amazon, GoDaddy and Tesla. Hundreds of companies trust UpGuard with their vendor risk management such as The New York Stock Exchange, Tech Mahindra, the New South Wales Government, Superloop, Aware Super, PagerDuty, USO, and Lendlease.

Co-founder and Co-CEO Mike Baukes said: "With third party breaches and supply chain leaks becoming a nearly daily occurrence, monitoring your vendors has become absolutely critical to anyone who manages business risk. We are extremely fortunate to be able to use this investment to continue building fantastic products to protect our customers against this threat, wherever in the world they may be."

Since its last round of funding in 2016, UpGuard has grown sales nearly 129% year over year, bringing three standalone products to market now known as the UpGuard suite. UpGuard has achieved 179% growth in customers in 2020 alone, with expectations to double by end of year. UpGuard also recently announced expansion into a new market with the addition of CyberResearch, a managed service offering designed to address the global cybersecurity talent shortage leaving nearly 500,000 positions open in the US.

IAG Firemark Ventures Managing Partner Scott Gunther said: "As businesses adopt digital, we see more ways that UpGuard can play a role in making our customers' digital world safer. We look forward to continuing our investment and partnership with UpGuard as we work together to explore new ways to help customers mitigate and reduce their cyber risk."

IAG brands include CGU and NRMA Insurance in Australia and NZI in New Zealand.