Breachbits

BreachBits provides a cyber risk quantification and monitoring platform, offering a view of an organization's security from an attacker's perspective. The company was founded in 2018 by John Lundgren (CEO) and J. Foster Davis (COO), two U.S. military cyber warfare veterans who spent a combined three decades protecting government systems. They identified a gap between military-grade cyber assessment capabilities and what was available to private businesses, which inspired them to establish the company. The firm emerged from its research and development phase in 2020 and by early 2024 had secured a seed funding round led by Blu Ventures, with participation from BlueWing Ventures, to scale its operations.

The company's core offering is its BreachRisk™ platform, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution that utilizes automated penetration testing to continuously assess and quantify an organization's likelihood of a data breach. This technology, described as Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaaS), automates reconnaissance, discovers vulnerabilities, and tests them to verify real threats, thereby avoiding the high rate of false positives common in the industry. The platform provides a simplified 10-point score to communicate risk levels to both technical and non-technical stakeholders, from IT departments to boardrooms. BreachBits can detect and test over 95% of the attack pathways identified in the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report. Its services include attack surface discovery and monitoring, external network penetration testing, and dark web monitoring.

BreachBits generates revenue through tiered SaaS subscriptions. The business serves a diverse client base, ranging from startups to large enterprises, and has specific solutions for third-party risk management in scenarios like M&A due diligence, vendor selection, and portfolio monitoring. A significant market for the company is the cyber insurance industry, where it partners with carriers and brokers, including a strategic investment from Lloyd's of London. These partnerships integrate BreachBits' risk assessment tools into the underwriting process, aiming to improve risk selection and reduce the time from quote to bind. The company also partners with Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to bundle its automated security capabilities into their offerings.

Keywords: cyber risk quantification, penetration testing as a service, PTaaS, automated security testing, cyber risk rating, attack surface management, BreachRisk, third-party risk management, cyber insurance underwriting, vulnerability assessment, M&A cyber due diligence, vendor risk, continuous security validation, offensive security, red teaming, John Lundgren, J. Foster Davis, military veteran founded, cyber warfare, data breach prediction