Insider Brief

• Guardz, a cybersecurity company, raised an $18M Series A round led by Glilot+, with participation from existing and new investors, to enhance its offering for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) serving small businesses.
• The company’s platform helps MSPs manage cybersecurity for small businesses, addressing challenges like sourcing cyber insurance coverage and managing cybersecurity setups across multiple platforms, while offering automated threat detection and remediation.
• Guardz, which was founded in 2022, aims to support MSPs in protecting small businesses, a crucial part of the US economy, by offering a holistic cybersecurity solution that streamlines security management and adds a new revenue stream through cyber insurance.

PRESS RELEASE — TEL AVIV, Israel/December 13, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Guardz, the cybersecurity company securing and insuring small businesses, today announced that it has raised an $18M Series A round led by Glilot+, the early growth fund of Glilot Capital Partners. Guardz’s existing investors Hanaco Ventures, iAngels, and GKFF Ventures participated in the oversubscribed round and were joined by new investors ClearSky. The investment comes less than a year after Guardz launched with $10M in seed funding, bringing its total funding to date to $28M.

Since emerging from stealth, Guardz has achieved product-market fit, optimizing its holistic cybersecurity offering for the Managed Service Providers (MSPs) who serve small businesses. In less than a year, Guardz has experienced rapid growth, partnering with hundreds of MSPs and securing thousands of the businesses they manage in the US and Europe. The new funds raised will be used to fuel the company’s commercial growth and accelerate product development to increase cybersecurity coverage, as well as to expand sales, marketing, and customer success operations globally.

Small businesses, which serve as the backbone of the US economy, are increasingly targeted by cybersecurity attacks. Recent years have seen them suffer 43% of data breaches with nearly $7 billion in reported losses, and yet only 14% of small businesses are prepared to defend themselves. With most cybersecurity solutions too cumbersome for small companies to deploy, too complicated for them to understand and maintain, and too costly, small businesses regularly turn to their MSPs to handle their cybersecurity needs. MSPs, in turn, face challenges in managing multiple companies’ cybersecurity setups across a multitude of disparate platforms, sourcing attractive cyber insurance coverage for their customers, and successfully outshining competitors for new clients.

The Guardz cybersecurity platform empowers MSPs to seamlessly manage their numerous small business customers’ cyber posture, subscription plans, and remediation from a single, multi-tenant platform with a simple and cost-effective approach. The holistic solution provides automated threat detection and remediation across all attack vectors, including business data, employee identities, cloud directories, web browsing, emails, and devices, with real-time risk prevention and actionable alerts. The AI-powered solution automatically monitors a company’s external and internal digital footprint to continuously analyze cybersecurity risks and remediate threats. Additionally, Guardz’s comprehensive cybersecurity protection enables MSPs to offer their clients cyber insurance, which was previously inaccessible due to a lack of cybersecurity controls, generating an additional MSP revenue stream and further protecting their customers’ business interests.

“MSPs are at the forefront of protecting small businesses, which underpin the US economy, and we are on a mission to empower them to do so better and more efficiently,” said Dor Eisner, CEO and Co-Founder of Guardz. “We are proud to enable our MSP partners to ensure not only small businesses’ cybersecurity posture, but also the longevity of their businesses. The time is now to double down on our successful go-to-market machine and equip even more MSPs to do so.”

“When we met the exceptional team at Guardz, which combines cybersecurity leaders with small business go-to-market experts, it became evident that they had built the ultimate solution for small business cybersecurity — a longstanding and rapidly growing market need we’ve been monitoring at Glilot for a while,” stated Lior Litwak, Managing Partner and Head of Glilot+. “Guardz has developed an impressive, holistic, and user-friendly cybersecurity and cyber insurance risk-assessment platform that is cleverly tailored to MSPs, who serve the often-overlooked long-tail small business market. We are excited to lead this funding round and join the Guardz team on their journey to secure the digital world for those who today need it most.”

“Guardz continues to demonstrate top-decile growth, in exceptionally challenging market environments. The trend for MSPs’ customers being drawn to securing and insuring their businesses in a holistic, hassle-free manner is a significant tailwind. We’re exceptionally proud to continue to support Dor and Alon as we have done from the very beginning of their journey,” said Alon Lifshitz, Founding Partner at Hanaco Ventures.

“The speed at which Guardz has brought a product to market, and then instantly created adoption and usage is profound,” said Shelly Hod Moyal, iAngels Founding Partner. “It is rare to see a company multiply sales quarter-over-quarter at this stage, and it speaks volumes to Dor and Alon’s vision and execution.”

To learn more about the new funding, please visit here.

About Guardz

Guardz is a holistic cybersecurity solution built to empower MSPs to secure and insure SMEs against ever-evolving threats such as phishing, ransomware attacks, data loss, and user risks by leveraging AI and a multilayered approach. The solution streamlines cybersecurity with its automated detection and response capabilities across users, emails, devices, data, and cloud apps, all from a single pane of glass. By combining robust cybersecurity technology and deep insurance expertise, Guardz ensures that businesses’ security is consistently monitored, managed, and optimized to prevent the next attack and mitigate the risk. Guardz was founded in 2022 by Dor Eisner and Alon Lavi along with a team of cyber and insurance experts who combine innovation, experience, and creativity to create a safer digital world for small businesses.

About Glilot Capital Partners

Glilot Capital Partners is a multi-stage venture fund that invests in Israel’s most extraordinary entrepreneurs. Glilot backs teams that develop advanced technology in areas of Cybersecurity, Cloud Computing, AI/ML DevOps, DevTools, and more. The fund creates an environment that makes it possible to generate real lasting value for both sides of the investment equation, supporting founders from inception to acquisition with long term relationships and methodologies built in over a decade. Glilot was founded in 2011 and currently manages over $700M+ across its funds. This round is led by Glilot+, the early growth fund of Glilot Capital Partners, which focuses on leading Series A and B rounds in the firm’s focus sectors.

Media contact:
Allison Grey
Headline Media
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UK: +44 203 807 4482
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Featured image: Credit: Guardz