Cybersecurity startup GuardRails raises S$1m in seed round led by Cocoon Capital

SOFTWARE security startup GuardRails has raised S$1 million in a seed funding round led by Singapore-based early-stage venture capital firm Cocoon Capital.

The Singapore-based startup will use the funds to hire more "software engineers, security experts, as well as sales and customer success representatives". It will also add support for more programming languages, development platforms and security testing technologies.

GuardRails helps developers find, fix and prevent security vulnerabilities in real time. It was founded by Austrian security specialist Stefan Streichsbier, and has close to 800 development teams across the US, the UK, Europe and Asia on its platform.

The startup graduated from ICE71 Accelerate in May 2019. ICE71 is a three-month accelerator programme for early-stage cybersecurity startups, and was founded by Singtel Innov8, the corporate venture capital arm of the Singtel Group, and NUS Enterprise, the entrepreneurial arm of the National University of Singapore.

"Currently, companies need a small army to deploy and integrate security solutions tightly into the development workflows, after which they find heaps of cryptic vulnerabilities without any useful information on how to fix them. This is something not many companies, especially small businesses, can afford to do," said Mr Streichsbier, who is also CEO of GuardRails.

Lead investor Cocoon Capital had back in July raised S$30 million for its second fund to aid enterprise tech startups in South-east Asia.