Cybersecurity startup watchTowr secures US$10.25m pre-series A funding

• Led by Prosus Ventures &Vulcan Capital, follow-on from Wavemaker Partners
• Enabling organisations to get ahead of attackers and prevent breaches

WatchTowr, a cybersecurity startup headquartered in Singapore, has secured US$8 million (RM35.37 million) in a pre-series A investment round co-led by Prosus Ventures and Vulcan Capital with repeat participation from Wavemaker Partners. WatchTower’s total funding now comes to US$10.25 million (RM45.31 million) , factoring the seed round of US$2.25 million that was secured in November 2021 from Vulcan Capital and Wavemaker Partners.

Sachin Bhanot, Head of SE Asia Investments, Prosus Ventures, said, “We are excited to back Benjamin Harris and his team as they tackle increasingly complex cybersecurity challenges. This investment enables us to expand our portfolio in the domain of cybersecurity and data privacy.”

Managing Director & Head of Southeast Asia for Vulcan Capital, Tommy Teo, remarked that, “watchTowr has tremendous potential and in a very short period of time has demonstrated promising traction and aptitude to grow. Our continued support is a strong vote of confidence in Benjamin and the watchTowr team, and will go towards attracting more talent and extending their reach across the region.”

Empowering enterprises to get ahead of attackers

“Our technology gives organisations visibility of how they could be compromised, in real-time. Traditional assurance approaches, like penetration testing, are no longer effective or rapid enough to keep organisations secure,” said Benjamin. “By continuously incorporating the latest attacker tactics and techniques into the platform, CISOs can understand their susceptibility to emerging vulnerabilities and threats in hours, rather than weeks or months.”

Over the last 10 years, organisational attack surfaces have ballooned to include outsourced technology, shadow IT, cloud environments and supply chain risks, to the point where most organisations have simply lost track of their attack surface.

Since November 2021, watchTowr has proven its technology, identifying high-impact and critical weaknesses across organisations at scale - before attackers could exploit them. WatchTowr has demonstrated that rapid reaction to emerging vulnerabilities within hours —across vast attack surfaces—is possible, enabling organisations to get ahead of attackers and prevent breaches. When vulnerabilities like the famed Log4Shell go from discovery to Internet-wide attacks within a matter of hours, empowering organisations to defend themselves ahead of this indiscriminate exploitation is incredibly powerful.

To fuel and underpin this capability, watchTowr’s technology builds a real-time view of what an organisation's attack surface looks like to an attacker, typically empowering CISOs with a 300-400% increase in attack surface visibility. “As the old adage goes: ‘you can’t protect what you don’t know about’,” Benjamin said.

WatchTowr will use the funds to enhance its technology and seize growth opportunities.