BitSight Solidifies Role as the Leader and Standard in Security Ratings

POSTED on January 13, 2016

Security Ratings Market Creator Grows Revenue, Customer Base and Product Capabilities in 2015

BitSight Technologies, the leader and standard in Security Ratings, today announced 2015 momentum and milestones. The demand for BitSight Security Ratings in vendor risk management, performance benchmarking, and cyber insurance underwriting has driven the company’s tremendous sales growth and product innovation.

Expanding the Security Ratings Market

• Sales increased more than five times over 2014
• Finished year with 250 customers worldwide, four times greater than 2014, including 35 Fortune 500 companies.
• Expanded cyber insurance sales by over 500 percent.  BitSight is trusted by many of the world’s leading cyber insurance carriers, including 7 of the top 10 global cyber insurance companies, accounting for over half a billion dollars in premiums written in 2015.
• Broadened geographic reach with 25 percent of customers based outside of North America, including sales and partner teams in EMEA and an APAC-wide reseller partnership with Singtel.
• Experienced major customer adoption in all key verticals, including financial services, insurance, healthcare, energy/utilities, technology, manufacturing, retail and education.
• Selected as a Gartner “Cool Vendor” in Vendor Management for 2015.
• Received Barclays ‘Most Innovative Prospect’ award at their 2015 Open Innovation Event in New York.

Growing to Meet Market Demand

• Secured $25M in Series B funding from Singtel Innov8, Liberty Global Ventures, Comcast Ventures, Globespan Capital Partners, Menlo Ventures, Shaun McConnon, Commonwealth Capital Ventures, and Flybridge Capital Partners, raising BitSight’s total funding to $50M.
• The world’s largest communications firms, Comcast, Liberty Global, and Singtel, became investors, customers, and strategic partners, allowing BitSight to leverage these firms’ network scale, customer reach, and security expertise.
• Reached 150 employees worldwide, a 68% increase over 2014.
• Added Brendan Hannigan, former VP and General Manager of IBM’s Security Systems division and former CEO of Q1 Labs to the BitSight Board of Directors; added David Zilberman, Managing Director at Comcast Ventures, as an advisor to the BitSight Board of Directors.
• Promoted Tom Turner, former EVP of Sales and Marketing, to President and COO, Todd Laughman to VP of Sales, Terry Roulic to VP of Finance, and Debbie Umbach to VP of Marketing.

Continued Innovation and Research

• Invested heavily in data science and research team, with Jay Jacobs, Senior Data Scientist and a former co-author of the annual Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report.
• Published research that validates the actionability of BitSight Security Ratings:
  • Identified a strong correlation between BitSight Security Ratings and publicly disclosed breaches: The lower the rating, the higher the likelihood of a breach.
  • Revealed 43 Percent of BitTorrent applications on corporate networks contain malicious software.
  • Uncovered significant security performance dip in energy and utilities industry in Third Annual BitSight Insights Benchmarking Report.
  • Highlighted strong link between botnets and publicly disclosed data breaches in various industries.
• Strengthened the operationalization of ratings by tailoring tools to meet customer needs, expanding data breadth, and adding further automation:
  • Enterprises can offload risk mitigation through automated vendor access to the BitSight portal; leverage remediation guidance for quick resolution of issues; access ratings through integration with governance, risk and compliance platforms such as RSA Archer; and manage hundreds or thousands of vendors using file folders.
  • Organizations can now prioritize risks across the vendor ecosystem with portfolio level vulnerability filtering and insight into peer-to-peer file sharing activity, website security settings, and software services on a company’s network.
  • Cyber insurers can get instant Security Ratings on virtually any company in the world with BitSight’s new Provisional Rating capability, enabling insurance companies to make quick, data-driven underwriting decisions.

“BitSight’s exponential growth and continuous innovation in 2015 clearly validates the company as the standard in Security Ratings,” said Shaun McConnon, CEO of BitSight Technologies. “BitSight is breaking barriers and making significant progress towards our goal of being as widely recognized as Moody’s or S&P for the information security space. We are the leader in this new and innovative space, and we intend to expand that lead in 2016.”

To learn more about BitSight and its solutions, visit: http://www.bitsighttech.com/solutions