View this article online: https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/international/2019/03/28/521827.htm
Tel Aviv-based Sayata Labs has raised $6.5 million in seed funding for its cybersecurity and data science capabilities that give insurers and brokers the ability to assess the cyber risk of small and medium sized businesses and provide these businesses with mitigation recommendations.
Elron, an Israeli early stage venture capital firm specializing in cyber, led the round. Sayata said the funds will be used to accelerate its operations in the cyber insurance market.
Sayata provides cyber risk visibility by analyzing a range of data sources that are linked to the vast majority of cyber breaches — a capability the firms says is currently non-existent elsewhere for small and medium sized business underwriting.
Asaf Lifshitz, co-founder and CEO of Sayata Labs, said Sayata is “pioneering a new approach to cyber insurance underwriting … never before available to the SMB market.”
He said the proprietary approach thoroughly assesses a company’s risk exposure, providing visibility to “facilitate superior risk selection and modeling so insurance carriers can grow their SMB portfolio profitably and with confidence.”
Sayata is already partnering with global insurer AXA enhance the firms’ cyber risk capabilities.
Guillaume Borie, CEO of AXA Next, and AXA Group chief innovation officer, said that with Sayata, his firm can both improve its risk selection and advance its clients’ cybersecurity protection, which helps it partner with its clients effectively.
“We view Sayata’s technology as a real game changer for cyber insurers underwriting SMBs,” said Zohar Rozenberg, vice president of Cyber Investments at Elron. “Currently, insurers are underwriting these policies with little visibility or insight into the risk. Sayata is changing this reality by simultaneously raising the overall cyber security standard for SMBs and insurers by providing both parties with a far greater understanding of cyber security posture.”