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Image credits: Intigiti

Intigriti, an Antwerp-based bug bounty platform, announced on Tuesday that it has secured €21M in a Series B round, closing the largest funding for a crowdsourced security platform in Europe.

The funding round was led by Octopus Ventures with the participation of German fund EnBW New Ventures and Intigriti’s previous investors and largest shareholder, ETF Partners.

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Fund utilisation

Intigriti says the new investment will enable it to accelerate its platform for rapid detection, reporting, and validation of vulnerabilities. The Belgian company will also use the funds to grow its headcount to more than 200 employees across its offices in the UK, Europe, and Singapore.

With 66 per cent of Intigriti’s talent pool considering switching to bug bounty hunting as a full-time career, Intigriti is investing in tools and features to strengthen its position as the platform of choice for ethical hackers.

Inti De Ceukelaire, Head of Hackers at Intigriti, says, “Our researcher’s automation flows have allowed Intigriti customers to detect vulnerabilities before any commercial scanner could. With this investment, we will continue to optimise the process to keep validation time at a minimum while upholding our 95% accuracy standard.”

Intigriti: What you need to know

Founded in 2016 by Stijn Jans, Intigriti connects organisations with ethical hackers to continuously test and improve their security through bug bounty programmes and other crowdsourced techniques.  

By creating a community of white hat hackers who think like real hackers, the company delivers agile, continuous security testing in a cost-effective and simple way. 

The company’s interactive platform features real-time reports of current vulnerabilities, enabling organisations to get visibility over their attack surface. 

Intigriti claims that on average companies receive 53 reports within one week of launching on the platform, and 71 per cent receive high to critical reports within 48 hours. 

The company has released a hybrid pentest offering in which the solution enables companies to work with selected researchers in individual engagements within an agreed timeframe but following a result-based rate, like bug bounty programmes. 

It comes with triage services, a vital in-house validation process that ensures clients only receive valid, unique, and in-scope vulnerability reports. During the pilot, more than €100K was earned by penetration testers trying out a new service, says the company. 

Since its initial funding round in 2020, the company has achieved 650 per cent growth. 

Investors

Based out of London, Octopus is a multi-stage European VC specialising in health, money, deep tech, and consumer. With £1.3B under management and investing over £100M a year, Octopus Ventures is one of the largest and most active venture investors in Europe. 

Paul Davidson, Investor at Octopus Ventures, says, “Cybersecurity companies can create a certain level of automation, but human intelligence still ranks ahead when it comes to identifying security threats. Intigriti has developed a differentiated platform proposition that enables the brightest minds in security to detect the broadest and most critical set of risks. We believe this team can drive this fast-growing category forward with their modern and data-compliant approach.” 

Remy de Tonnac, partner at ETF partners, says, “As the team has demonstrated over the years, ethical hackers are the future. This large and talented pool of cyber experts is perfectly positioned to address the needs of a sustainable economy by future-proofing critical sectors such as smart cities, IoT systems, smart grids, autonomous vehicles, and the sharing economy.”

Holger Wagner, investment director at EnBW New Ventures, adds, “Critical infrastructures are subject to change in the context of digitalisation. Here, in particular, we still see a lot of potential in the area of security solutions and their utilisation. Technology won’t be the only answer, it is a combination with the intelligence of the crowd.”