In today’s information age, business data is the catalyst for growth. The amount of data produced each year is expected to grow at a 24% CAGR through 2025. While the emphasis on big data is unlocking new avenues for opportunity and possibility, it comes with the responsibility to protect this growing mound of data. NVISIONx is a data risk intelligence platform for the enterprise that allows them to gain a holistic understanding of the data they hold and maintain and need to safeguard. As data is more frequently shared across an organization and also with external partners, vulnerabilities increase and the platform works with all facets within an organization to formulate company-wide data protection controls, compliance, risk reduction, and storage policy. Most risk mitigation solutions come only after breaches and implement policies across the entire data stack – treating all data the same. NVISIONx prioritizes data against risk using a dynamic approach that optimizes security in the short and long term.
LA TechWatch caught up with NVISIONx CEO and Founder Glen Day to learn more about how NVISIONx seeks to change the paradigm of how data risk is viewed, the company’s strategic plans, recent round of funding, and much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
We raised a $4.6M seed round of funding led by Companyon Ventures, with participation from Morgan Stanley Next Level Fund, SixThirty Ventures, Gutbrain Ventures, PBJ Capital, CreativeCo Capital, and Gaingels.
Tell us about your product or service.
NVISIONx is the first data risk intelligence (DRI) platform that fuses business data and cyber intel analytics to empower companies to gain complete control of their enterprise data to reduce risk, compliance scopes, and storage costs. The platform provides a unique approach to enterprise data inventory and classification through visual analytics that quickly enables Business, IT, and Cyber leaders to collaborate on what data to protect and what to purge, so they can confidently optimize security controls and defensibly purge files that have no business value, incur risk, and provide massive cost savings across the enterprise in just a few weeks.
What inspired the start of NVISIONx?
After spending more than 25 years in cybersecurity and privacy, I discovered that there’s a fundamental and systemic issue within the industry. Companies have invested millions of dollars in the most advanced controls available and hired some of the best cyber professionals available, but data breaches are still occurring at alarming rates. Every company struggles with knowing where their critical data was, what it looks like, who has access to it, and how many copies there are. Companies can’t protect what they don’t know. I started NVISIONx to solve why data breaches continue to happen and why privacy compliance is so hard. We enable cyber professionals to go from reactive firefighters to proactive data defenders. We make sure a company’s most critical data are protected while eliminating the vulnerable junk data that costs millions of dollars to store.
How is it different?
Our Platform differentiates itself by starting at the root of the problem to prevent data breaches from happening in the first place. Most organizations use a variety of controls to protect their critical data. The problem is those controls are missing the business intelligence of what data is critical and where can it flow. As a result, cyber teams deal high volume of false alerts, or no alerts at all, that data may be at risk. We’ve seen the challenges businesses face when trying to communicate what data is important, and what isn’t to their IT and cybersecurity teams. We help businesses address the most crucial questions, such as: where is the data stored, where should it be stored, who should have access, and how to reliably classify the most critical data for effective monitoring. We help businesses see that these are data-driven decisions that are based on fact and analysis, not gut instincts. With our Platform, organizations can start seeing indicators of risk and compromise before the breach. While many cybersecurity professionals are skilled first responders after breaches occur, ideally, they want to get in earlier to spot the indicators that something bad is about to happen and stop it before it can damage the company or its customers.
What market you are targeting and how big is it?
Industry analysts and VCs have projected the global market to be greater than $50B. Every company across every industry needs solutions like ours to address their dynamic data risk challenges.
What’s your business model?
We’re a subscription service model in which we have 2 pricing models- volume or value-based.
What are your post-COVID office plans??
We look forward to going back to our offices in Santa Monica once it makes business sense but will remain flexible for remote work.
What was the funding process like?
Exciting, frustrating, and very glad to have this behind us!
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Our biggest challenge was being compared to other privacy compliance vendors which most VCs see as a very crowded space, but not that Gartner has defined our market sector as data risk, it simplified the VC pitches and were able to raise 50% more funding than our initial goals.
Our biggest challenge was being compared to other privacy compliance vendors which most VCs see as a very crowded space, but not that Gartner has defined our market sector as data risk, it simplified the VC pitches and were able to raise 50% more funding than our initial goals.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
The biggest factor was realizing that this could really transform the cyber and privacy compliance challenges in ways that make much more sense by taking a more pragmatic approach. Once they understood our concept and approach and then viewed the rich and interactive analytics, as well as the ease of use, the check started to flow.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
- Transform our marketing and messaging to be more personae-focused
- Increased our Platform’s technical capabilities with increased automation
- Further expand our partnership to extend our market reach
What advice can you offer companies in Los Angeles that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Be smart in what you invest in early on to 1st prove your value and market fit but be prepared to invest heavily in marketing to grow your market traction.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Becoming a recognized service and thought leader of the data risk intelligence space and having companies realize that this is the missing link as to finally get cyber to live up to its promise.
What’s your favorite outdoor activity in LA?
Long walks on the beaches between Marina del Rey through Malibu.
