Cyber security services firm Cyan Forensics has raised an extra £5m in funding to aid its international expansion. Edinburgh, Scotland-headquartered Cyan previously raised £3m for its development and the new Series A investment round was led by Par Equity, which is keen to fund expansion across Europe and the US.
Cyan, founded in 2016, helps cloud companies, social media platforms and law enforcement find and block harmful content from paedophiles, terrorists and others, and the £5m will be used to fund business growth over the next two years.
The company's tools allow police to find evidence of child abuse or terrorist activity on suspects' computers “in just minutes”, it says, replacing legacy processes that can take many hours and which are typically used in a forensics lab weeks or months after an arrest because of backlogs.
Its rapid digital triage technology has been described by the UK government as “game-changing” tech and has been assessed by the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) as “having the power to make a big impact” in the fight against online child sexual abuse and imagery.
Cyan Forensics has a contract with the UK Home Office to provide tools to police forces across the UK as part of the Child Abuse Image Database (CAID). Ian Stevenson, CEO of Cyan, said: “Our technology is already making a significant impact within counter terror and child sexual abuse investigations in the UK, and we’re excited to build on this momentum in mainland Europe and the US.
“We’ve built a great network of partners to support our ambitious growth plans and our team will double in size during each of the next two years to support this growth.”
The Cyan Protect product also helps social media platforms, messaging and cloud content sharing companies find and block child abuse and terrorist content, providing a first line of defence on their networks.
Paul Munn, managing partner of Par Equity, added: “The funding will help Cyan scale up, strengthen their position in global markets and build out further applications for contraband filter technology in social media, cloud and other online use cases.”
