National Grid Partners (NGP), the investment and innovation arm of National Grid plc, recently announced investments in two leading online security companies whose products help enterprises keep data secure and ward off cyberattacks.

"In these uncertain times, few things are more mission-critical than data security," said Lisa Lambert, National Grid's Chief Technology and Innovation Officer and the founder and president of National Grid Partners. "Identifying next-generation security measures and supporting their development and adoption are key to one of National Grid's core commitments: Delivering a safer, more seamless energy future to our millions of customers."

Launched in late 2018 as the utility industry's first Silicon Valley-based corporate venture group, NGP now has invested $154 million in 19 startups, plus three strategic funds in the US, UK and Israel. NGP is the lead investor in more than half its deals, including both announced recently.

Its newest portfolio additions are:

• 1touch.io, a provider of data discovery, privacy, and security solutions. Headquartered outside New York City, the company offers network-based data discovery that lets enterprises identify - in a continuous, automated manner - all internal repositories of sensitive data, enabling heightened security and compliance. NGP led the $14 million Series A round with Jerusalem Venture Partners, in which NGP also is an investor.
  
  
• RiskIQ, a Silicon Valley-based cybersecurity company whose customers include Amazon, Facebook, Disney and eight of the 10 largest financial institutions in the U.S. RiskIQ helps Fortune 500 companies and large government agencies manage their attack surfaces by enabling them to discover unknowns and investigate threats outside the firewall, where the vast majority of cyberattacks originate. The $15M Series D round also includes Summit Partners and Battery Ventures, among others.

"The founders of these companies are pioneers of security and online commerce, with nearly 100 years combined experience," Lambert said. "We're proud to add them to our team and excited to help them reach the next stage in their growth."

RiskIQ CEO and cofounder Lou Manousos called NGP's investment "an incredible opportunity to help customers in new markets understand and protect their digital attack surfaces as they expand outside the firewall, especially as business becomes remote amid the COVID-19 pandemic." RiskIQ recently launched a COVID-19 Internet Intelligence Gateway, which provides intelligence to the cybersecurity community fighting a spike in pandemic-related cybercrime. It also gives them access to RiskIQ's global discovery network to analyze suspicious COVID-19-related URLs.

1Touch.io notes that with millions of office workers now confined to their homes amid the global pandemic, enterprises have little insight into how customer data is used, stored, transmitted and protected. "Organizations today need a granular understanding of the flows of their protected data," said CEO and cofounder Zak Rubinstein. "Privacy, security, governance and business intelligence have been hampered by recent global events."

Source: National Grid