Hadrian, a hacker-led cybersecurity startup based in London and Amsterdam offering an event-based, offensive security platform in a SaaS model, has secured €10 million in seed funding. Previously, the startup secured €2.5 million funding in November last year.
The investment round was led by HV Capital along with participation from Picus Capital, Slimmer AI and angels, including Adriaan Mol (Mollie founder who backed Monite) Koen Köppen and Niklas Hellman.
Prepares for US expansion
The proceeds of this round will let Hadrian to drive scale by onboarding new hacker, development, and sales talent, consolidating European markets, and preparing for expansion into the US.
Rogier Fischer, CEO at Hadrian, said: “Hadrian understands that CISOs and their teams can’t be expected to attend to every potential threat across the attack surface. As companies are overwhelmed by cybercrime, the unique value of hackers’ outside-in approach to security becomes more important. Our autonomous technology identifies real threats and prioritizes where action is needed, connecting urgent tasks to existing workflow tools and processes so that the important stuff gets handled first.”
Jasper Masemann, commented: “HV sees a massive need for Hadrian’s offensive security approach made out of Europe. I am extremely impressed how strong their unique approach of AI models and advanced automation of simulating cyberattacks already is. Thanks to the team’s vast expertise and track record I am very confident they will be able to grab a huge slice of the security market.”
Hadrian client Alessio Setaro, CISO of Leroy Merlin Italy said: “The Hadrian technology has the capability to identify some vulnerabilities in a deeper way than other fully automated tools. With the advice provided, they helped us to better perform our systems hardening. Excellent insight.”
What issue does Hadrian tackle?
As companies’ online attack surfaces become larger and more decentralized, they become harder for defensive security teams to monitor and protect. Part of the challenge is that IT infrastructure is increasingly complex. The rapid growth of IoT, cloud-sharing technology, APIs and work-from-home solutions in response to pandemic demand has compounded the issue.
The nature of cyber attacks is also changing as cyber criminals are automating their attacks to target thousands of companies at the same time.
Existing defense solutions often multiply the problem by scanning too broadly and not emphasising real threats, leaving security teams with huge data streams but no clear priorities.
Hadrian was founded in 2021 by Olivier Beg, Rogier Fischer, Tijl van Vliet, and Maurice Clin, a group of hackers and developers when they started seeing cyber attackers using AI and red teams failing to keep up. The cybersecurity startup provides automated security insights through its AI-driven testing SaaS platform.
The company enables detailed attack surface management and risk prioritisation. Using cloud-native technology and ML-modules, Hadrian proactively and continuously scans and tests companies’ IT infrastructures to provide fast, precise, and holistic insights.
Hadrian takes a unique, more efficient approach and has already landed several key customers in financial services, industrials, and property management. Its holistic platform scans the entire attack surface automatically and continuously, thereby exposing unknown weaknesses throughout a company’s digital infrastructure.
