Companies are mobilizing on cyber risks now more than ever, but can’t be sure of the effectiveness of their investments when it comes to cybersecurity. Paris-based Citalid‘s technology makes it possible to financially evaluate cyber risks for each client, by taking into account factors such as the cyber threats likely to target the company, its current level of defense, and its geopolitical context.
Citalid’s solution has already been adopted by many major French companies, and the startup has now raised a round of €1.2 million led by Axeleo Capital, with participation from BNP Paribas Développement.
Citalid will use the new funding to recruit new talent to significantly accelerate its growth, and explore new use cases for its technology, such as cyber insurance.
Citalid was founded by Maxime Cartan and Alexandre Dieulangard in 2017, both of whom participated in one of the first French government teams on cyber threat intelligence as part of the National Authority on Cyber Defense. There, they were in charge of investigating computer threats for the highest authorities of the state, leading major cyber defense operations.
The duo noticed the need to scale up cyber risk analyses by taking into account multiple factors (including cyber, geopolitical, economic, and legal). This enables risk managers to better understand and contextualize the risks that their different lines of business face, allowing them to better plan their defense investment strategies.
To evaluate risk of threats, Citalid’s algorithms analyze probabilities for the frequency
and financial impact for the most likely attack scenarios. First, the platform gauges the level of defensive maturity of the scope by relying on internationally recognized evaluation criteria (CIS 20, NIST, ISO, etc.). For example, for an industrial energy provider, this would involve determining the level of defensive maturity of each of its activities (production, transport, distribution, storage, etc).
The financial impacts of each successful attack are also evaluated collaboratively with
business teams. All financial losses can be modeled, from lost productivity to fines, as well as losses in competitiveness or corporate reputation.
Citalid’s R&D department continuously models and integrates new attacks, and will also use the new funding to improve its prediction capabilities through AI.
“We are proud of the confidence our first customers, shareholders and partners have placed in Citalid, and honored that they share our vision and our willingness to offer a new grid of cyber analysis to decision makers,” said Maxime Cartan and Alexandre Dieulangard, co-founders of Citalid. “In addition to accelerating our growth in France and internationally, our ambition is to apply our algorithms to new use cases, such as cyber insurance. Our quantification technology allows us to model the impact of an insurance product on the financial exposure of a business, but also to help insurers better estimate and apprehend cyber risks.”
“With their experience at ANSSI, Alexandre and Maxime have developed an advanced cyber-risk approach,” Mathieu Viallard, Founding Partner of Axeleo Capital. “We are convinced that their product will become a must, in particular in the market challenges of cyber insurance, where the combined approach of risk analysis and economic issues in
real time will become key. At the heart of a rapidly growing cybersecurity market, we confirm our positioning to support the best B2B tech projects in this segment.”
