British cybersecurity startup ESProfiler secures £2.8 million funding round led by Nauta Capital

ESProfiler, a British cybersecurity startup, has announced a £2.8 million seed round, led by Nauta Capital.

This builds on angel investments received in 2023.

The company says it is on a mission to tackle the widespread inefficiencies in enterprise cybersecurity investments.

The founding team, leveraging their first hand experience, identified critical gaps in how cybersecurity tools were being utilised. These tools often overlapped, were underutilised, and misaligned with the actual methods of adversaries and continued a frustrating cycle of inefficient security tooling churn.

According to a press release: “This challenge is exacerbated by a lack of standardisation within the cyber market. Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) are navigating a labyrinth of marketing jargon, struggling to quantify the effectiveness and relevance of their growing security portfolios.”

“This struggle is set against a backdrop of tightening budgets and escalating pressures from boards to justify cybersecurity expenditures.”

ESProfiler’s platform has been co-developed with UK financial institutions. It quantifies what security investments do against the evolving ways adversaries attack organisations.

The aim is to enable CISOs to focus on the most pertinent threats and continuously optimise their investments for maximised security returns. It offers a view of an enterprise's security capabilities, identifies gaps and efficacy, and provides the  commercial and financial data needed for informed decision making.

The newly secured investment will fuel ESProfiler's commercial growth, enhance product development, and add new capabilities to its platform.

Louis Holt, CEO and Co-founder at ESProfiler, says "Partnering with Nauta Capital marks a significant step in our journey towards offering continuous security investment validation to enterprises.”

“This funding is not just a financial boost but a validation of our vision at ESProfiler. It will accelerate our engineering efforts, expanding our platform's capabilities and reach."

Pratima Aiyagari, London-based Partner at Nauta, says: “ESProfiler has created a new way for CISOs to operate. It provides continuous analysis of security tools and their performance. With this intelligence, any company’s security can be optimised to help teams do more with what they have.”

“For the first time, companies can rationalise their security budget based on hard data. In today’s economic environment, that’s a huge advantage – and one that positions security as a business driver and competitive advantage for the long-term.”