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NAB leads $10M investment in risk protection firm Digital Shadows

Bank financially backs and joins board of UK start-up

Digital risk protection managed service provider Digital Shadows has today announced it has secured $10 million in a funding round led by National Australia Bank (NAB).

NAB is an existing customer of the firm, and made the investment through its NAB Ventures arm. Existing investors, including Octopus Ventures, made further contributions to boost their shareholding in the company.

The funding boost will be used to scale the company’s SearchLight managed service.

SearchLight users register their document marking systems, email headers, and intellectual property, which are continually searched for on the open, deep, and dark web. The service also detects domain impersonation, malicious mobile applications and spoof social media profiles as well as monitoring for exploited vulnerabilities on your infrastructure, weak or expiring certificates, open ports, and misconfigured file sharing protocols.

The service currently has hundreds of users, the company said, which it hopes to take into the thousands.

“We plan to invest in additional product and development resources to build a platform that can service thousands of future clients and maintain and extend our place as the leader in digital risk protection,” said Digital Shadows CEO Alastair Paterson.

The money will also be used to expand Digital Shadows’ team in the Asia Pacific region, to provide local threat intelligence expertise and 24/7 support.

“This investment and partnership came about because of the belief NAB has in our service, our company, and the growth trajectory of the digital risk protection market. It is the ultimate validation to our business when a customer is so impressed that they want to join the ride as investors,” Paterson added.

NAB’s chief enterprise security officer David Fairman and NAB Ventures’ managing director Melissa Widner will be joining the Digital Shadows board as observers.

“As an existing customer of Digital Shadows, we have seen the value its service provides by delivering early foresight into a range of cybersecurity threats. Digital risk protection is an emerging security category and we have already seen the benefits of adding their capabilities to our security portfolio,” Fairman said.