BitSight Technologies: Leading Security Ratings Solution

Ayushi Goyal, Apoorva Bajj

Jul 24, 2023 — 7 min read

Bitsight Success Story

Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by BitSight Technologies.

While cybersecurity threats and vulnerabilities continue to increase and evolve, companies often don’t understand security performance. Even many of them cannot evaluate their security performance, let alone the risk posed by third or fourth-party vendors. But with the right cybersecurity assessment tool, companies can accurately measure their security posture and vendor ecosystem.

BitSight Technologies is a renowned US-based company that developed security ratings to measure the enterprises, government agencies, and educational institutions’ security performance and cyber risk. Review the article to learn about BitSight Technologies’ startup story, founders, mission, products, funding, growth, and more.

BitSight Technologies – Company Highlights

Company Name	BitSight Technologies
Headquarters	Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Sector	Cybersecurity
Founders	Nagarjuna Venna and Stephen Boyer
Founded	2011
Valuation	$2.4 billion (2021)
Website	Bitsight.com

About BitSight Technologies

BitSight Technologies is transforming how enterprises, government agencies, and educational institutions manage performance, exposure, and cyber risk for themselves and their third parties. Moreover, organizations rely on BitSight Technologies to prioritize their cybersecurity investments, build greater trust within their ecosystem, and reduce their chances of financial loss.

The platform is built over a decade of technological innovation, and its integrated solutions deliver value across enterprise security performance, cyber insurance, digital supply chains, and data analysis. This Boston-based company serves 3000+ global customers, with 180+ government agencies and quasi-governmental authorities relying on it.

BitSight Technologies – Industry

BitSight Technologies serves in the cybersecurity industry, with a global market size estimated at $221.72 billion in 2022. And the market is forecasted to grow to $657.02 billion by 2030 with a noteworthy CAGR of 14.59%. The market is witnessing tremendous growth due to increased data breaches, rising digitalization, and advanced cyber intrusions.

During Covid-19, many organizations shifted to remote working culture and deployed cyber security solutions, resulting in market growth. Some prominent cybersecurity players are McAfee, Inc., Palo Alto Networks, Cisco Systems, Inc., and Trend Micro Incorporated.

Size of cyber security market worldwide from 2020 to 2030

BitSight Technologies – Founders and Team

Nagarjuna Venna and Stephen Boyer are the co-founders of BitSight Technologies.

Nagarjuna Venna

Nagarjuna Venna has earned a B.Tech in Computer Science & Engineering from the National Institute of Technology Warangal and an M.Sc. in MS, SDM Fellow from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He worked as Principal Engineer at Brix Networks and Product Manager at EXFO Service Assurance. In addition to co-founding BitSight Technologies, he co-founded Saperix Inc. in 2010, which was acquired by Firemon in 2011.

Stephen Boyer

Stephen Boyer completed B.Sc. in Computer Science from Brigham Young University and System Design and Management from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the ex-Software Engineer at Caldera, and he co-founded Saperix Inc. in 2010, which was acquired by Firemon in 2011. Currently, Stephen is the Co-founder and CTO of BitSight Technologies and a Member of the CNBC Technology Executive Council.

BitSight Technologies Team

Steve Harvey – Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
Dave Fachetti – Chief Strategy Officer
Mark Desautelle – Chief Customer Officer
Alex Laats – Chief Product Officer & GM
James Hillier – Chief Financial Officer
Catherine Harrell – Chief Marketing Officer
Derek Vadala – Chief Risk Officer

Steve Harvey

Steve Harvey is the CEO of BitSight Technologies. Previously, he worked at Dow Jones as Managing Director, RiskMetrics Group as Head of Global Account Management, and ISS as Chief Operating Officer.

BitSight Technologies is a team of 800 employees.

BitSight Technologies – Startup Story

Stephen Boyer co-founded BitSight Technologies in 2011 with his friend and grad school classmate, Nagarjuna Venna. They devised the original idea of creating a global cybersecurity ratings system. Stephen had spent years before grad school working in cybersecurity for the United States government, so he knew many of the challenges the companies faced.

Nagarjuna and Stephen incorporated BitSight Technologies because they focused on improving cybersecurity’s state worldwide. The company introduced Portfolio Thresholds and Analytics in 2016. BitSight Technologies delivered the first objective measurement of national cybersecurity risk after a year in 2017.

In 2018 the company unveiled the Industry’s first cybersecurity performance planning and in 2019 Analytics Solution and Peer Analytics. It enhanced the third-party risk management platform to help companies respond to significant vulnerabilities in 2022. A year later, in April 2023, the company expanded into a broader integrated cyber risk management category.

BitSight Technologies – Mission and Vision

BitSight Technologies aims to change the state of cybersecurity. The company is on a mission to free the global economy from the impact of cyber incidents, empowering organizations to make better cyber risk decisions and grow confidently in the digital economy.

BitSight Technologies – Business Model

BitSight Technologies offer the most widely adopted Security Ratings solution helping enterprises understand their vendors, clients, and other third or fourth parties' security performance. The company’s ratings range from 250 to 900, with higher ratings indicating better cybersecurity performance. Security ratings consider things such as historical security performance and performance change over time.

BitSight Technologies formulates security ratings by collecting security information from billions of stored data points and online events. This data allows the company to see the indicators of compromise, infected machines, cyber hygiene, harmful user behavior, and cybersecurity controls in the client’s organization, allowing BitSight Technologies to create an overall rating of the organization’s security performance.

BitSight Technologies – Revenue Model

BitSight Technologies is a subscription-based model, with annual fees ranging from a few thousand dollars to analyze a single organization to over $1 million to review thousands of suppliers.

BitSight Technologies – Products and Services

BitSight Technologies provides three products: Security Performance Management, Third-Party Risk Management, and Cyber Insurance.

BitSight Technologies – Challenges Faced

BitSight Technologies acquired Israeli startup VisibleRisk in September 2021 to set up a local R&D center but shut it down in February 2023 because of the financial crisis in general and high-tech. In addition, 40 employees working in the center were laid off.

BitSight Technologies – Funding and Investors

BitSight Technologies raised $401.6 million by undertaking 7 funding rounds. Its latest funding round - Corporate Round, was conducted on September 13, 2021, and raised $250 million. Moreover, the Seed Round was completed on April 15, 2011, by securing $1 million. Some leading investors who back the company are Moody’s Investors Service, Menlo Ventures, GGV Capital, Warburg Pincus, Singtel Innov8, and Globespan Capital Partners.

Date	Round	Number of Investors	Money Raised	Lead Investor
September 13, 2021	Corporate Round	1	$250 million	Moody's Investors Service
June 28, 2018	Series D	4	$60 million	Warburg Pincus
September 15, 2016	Series C	8	$40 million	GGV Capital
June 25, 2015	Series B	9	$25.6 million	Comcast Ventures
June 05, 2013	Series A	7	$24 million	-
January 17, 2012	Grant	1	$1 million	National Science Foundation
April 15, 2011	Seed Round	3	$1 million	-

BitSight Technologies – Mergers and Acquisitions

BitSight Technologies acquired three companies, including ThirdPartyTrust on August 4, 2022, VisibleRisk on September 13, 2021, and Anubisnetworks on October 21, 2014.

BitSight Technologies – Growth

The valuation of BitSight Technologies increased from $155 million in 2018 to $2.4 billion in 2021. In August 2021, the company closed H1 2022, surpassing $100 million ARR (annual recurring revenue). BitSight Technologies’ revenue grew 280% during this period. It witnessed exceptional momentum in the public sector, growing 42% YOY.

BitSight Technologies – Partners

BitSight Technologies has partnered with:

Glass Lewis
Schneider Electric
Telefonica
ServiceNow
Moody’s Corporation

BitSight Technologies – Awards and Achievements

BitSight Technologies garnered recognition from industry experts:

Ranked among Fastest-Growing Companies in North America on the 2021 Deloitte Technology Fast 500 list
Recognized as a 2020 Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice for IT Vendor Risk Management Tools
Ranked 246 Fastest Growing Companies in North America on Deloitte’s 2019 Technology Fast 500 list
Named as a Leader in The Forrester New Wave: Cybersecurity Risk Rating Solutions, Q4 2018 evaluation in 2018

Bitsight - Cyber Risk Management as Visionary as You Are

BitSight Technologies – Competitors

Some alternatives and competitors of BitSight Technologies are as follows:

SecurityScorecard
OneTrust
UpGuard
RiskRecon
Prevalent
Black Kite
ServiceNow

FAQs

What does BitSight Technologies do?

BitSight Technologies is transforming how enterprises, government agencies, and educational institutions manage performance, exposure, and cyber risk for themselves and their third parties.

Who are the founders of BitSight Technologies?