Soveren, a London-based startup that automates the detection of privacy risks to help organizations comply with GDPR and CCPA, has launched out of stealth with $6.5 million in seed funding.
The company analyzes real-time data flows inside an organizations’ infrastructure to discover personal data and detect privacy risks to make it easier for CTOs and CISOs to recognize and address privacy gaps. Soveren says some 10 million companies globally are at risk of violating GDPR and other regulatory obligations because of their failure to detect and resolve privacy incident.
“Security software successfully addresses security threats, but has a limited impact on addressing privacy challenges,” Peter Fedchenkov, founder and co-CEO of Soveren, tells TechCrunch. “This is because, unlike other confidential data that can be easily isolated, personal data is actually meant to be accessed, used, and shared in day-to-day business operations. We believe that privacy is the new security because it demands the same automated, continuous protection measures.”
Fedchenkov says the idea for Soveren came from his personal experience in the e-commerce sector. “We saw first hand how manual and complex data protection and privacy compliance is today. It takes more time, more money, and more effort than it really should.”
Sovern has so far secured 10 lighthouse customers across software, e-commerce, travel, fintech, and healthcare in North America and Europe.
The firm is now planning to expand globally after securing a $6.5 million seed investment, which was led by Firstminute Capital with participation from Northzone, 11 unicorn founders including Airbnb and Mulesoft, Sir Richard Branson’s family, and a handful of global CEOs including Nikesh Arora, the chairman CEO of Palo Alto Networks.
Fedchenkov says, to begin with, Soveren will use the funds to expand its product team and to invest in sales and marketing. “We haven’t actually done anything on the marketing side yet, so we definitely want to double-down on that,” he tells TechCrunch.