Axio has raised $23 million in a Series B investment round. It brings the total raised by the company to $30 million. The investment is led by a new lead investor, ISTARI. There are two returning investors from previous rounds, NFP Ventures and IA Capital Group. Additionally, there are two new investors, Ischyros New York and Bob Dudley, Axio Chairman and former CEO of BP.
Scott Kannry, CEO and Co-Founder of Axio said, “We are ecstatic about securing this Series B investment round that now gives us the means to meet the growing global demand for cyber risk quantification.
“The attack landscape has demonstrated that old, faith-based strategies that simply layer on controls without a clear understanding of what to prioritize have done little to reduce susceptibility.”
What will Axio spend the money on?
Axio delivers risk decision-making technology. That technology is targeted at helping the CISO understand where the risk lies within their business. Once you know where the risk is, you can deploy the right controls to manage it. The key here is deploying the right controls, not just adding in more layers of controls that may not be effective.
It’s an increasingly important area for cybersecurity. Too many companies are focused on buying in technical solutions that they then try and deploy across the business. The problem is that they don’t know where their weaknesses are, so the effectiveness of those solutions is limited.
In its announcement, Axio states that it “will use the investment to accelerate its mission of empowering security and business leaders to discover and respond to the cyber risks that most affect their organizations.” It’s a fairly bland statement that doesn’t say anything other than we’ll keep doing what we already do.
The ISTARI connection
This deal also sees ISTARI make two appointments to the Axio Board of Directors. ISTARI’s Chief Technology Officer, Mark Malecki, and Managing Director of the Americas, Curt Dalton, will join the Board chaired by Bob Dudley, former CEO of BP.
AXIO has also joined the ISTARI collective. It’s a smart move for Axio as it brings it into a small group of nine very focused companies. It includes BlueVoyant, Claroty and Sygnia. Yes, there is some overlap with some of the other companies, but there are also some significant differences.
All of which raises an interesting question of who is this deal best for – Axio or ISTARI? While Axio is getting the money and the new board members, both of whom bring a wealth of experience, ISTARI gets a new piece in its community. A piece that it can promote to clients and widen its offerings.
Enterprise Times: What does this mean?
This is an interesting funding announcement. Risk management and cybersecurity might seem to be pretty standard fare. However, dig a little deeper and look specifically at controls and how they are implemented, there are a lot of problems.
Axio was set up to deal with this and to take things further forward. Its focus is on helping the CISO, not being a technical resource for the IT team. That’s an important differentiator to other solutions.
What will be important is to see just what this means to ISTARI. It has widened the number of companies in its collective. That has to be good for it in investment terms and in sales of its own services.
