BGF Invest £10.5 million in Witney Cyber Security Business

Published by

Nicky Godding

BGF, the UK and Ireland’s most active investor, has completed a £10.5 million minority investment in the company e2e-assure, an established, fast-growth cybersecurity business based in Oxfordshire. The funding will be used to facilitate international growth and expand its market offering.

e2e-assure was established in 2013 by cyber security expert, Rob Demain. It provides software and Security Operations Centre (SOC)-as-a-service, Managed Detection and Response (MDR), and monitoring solutions to government, mid-sized private organisations, and enterprise clients around the world. e2e-sssure’s SOC-as-a-Service infrastructure is run on its proprietary ‘Cumulo’ software and can integrate with existing customer deployed solutions to lower total cost of ownership. e2e-assure’s services are provided as a full outsource or as a hybrid operating model, working closely with existing customer teams.

A SOC is a centralised function which uses a combination of people, technology and processes to monitor, detect, prevent and respond to cyber-attacks or threats. The attraction to a customer of the ‘as-a-service’ model is the everchanging complexity of cybersecurity and the considerable overheads required for clients to manage their own SOC around the clock.

The cybersecurity market continues to see rapid growth, from $3.5 billion in 2004 to $124 billion in 2019, and is forecast to hit $170 billion by 2022. In 2020, 46 per cent of UK businesses suffered a cyber-attack and 80 per cent of senior management say cybersecurity is a “high priority” (UK Gov).

The level of sophistication of cyber-attacks versus the resource and capability of an organisation’s IT/cybersecurity function, requires specialist 24/7 services. e2e-assure is one of the largest and most capable SOCs in the UK. The business also has an established and growing presence in Australia.

In addition to its SOC-as-a-Service offering, e2e-assure focuses specifically on its social impact via a highly regarded neurodiversity hiring initiative. It actively recruits, trains, supports and retains people with different ways of thinking, providing a supportive and positively challenging working environment for its neurodiverse analysts.

Rob Demain, chief executive of e2e-assure, said: “We were looking for an investment partner to help us scale and ran an exhaustive selection process to find the right partner to achieve an outcome that fitted with e2e-assure’sculture and customers. BGF was the right choice at the right time for our business. Their expertise in the field of technology and their connections to international markets such as Australia will be key to unlocking growth. We look forward to working with the team to help shape our go to market strategy and bring e2e-assure’s unique offering to more customers than ever before.”

The deal was led by Alex Snodgrass, Elliot Vickerstaff and Guy Pope from BGF.

Alex Snodgrass, investor at BGF, said: “e2e-assure is a fantastic business that is well positioned to capitalise on rapid market growth. Under the guidance of Rob Demain, they have created a market leading business and platform that delivers huge value for its clients. We’re also extremely excited to support a business that has diversity at its core and is challenging traditional working practices. This is a significant investment at a period of rapid growth for the cyber security sector and we relish the opportunity to support e2e-assure on the next stage of its growth.”

The advisors to the transaction were:

BGF: Wilson Partners (Financial and Tax Due Diligence) in Maidenhead and Osborne Clarke (Legal Due Diligence and Documentation)
e2e-assure: Witney-based DSA Prospect (Corporate Finance Advisory) and Field Seymour Parkes (Legal) in Reading

Nicky Godding

Nicky Godding is editor of The Business Magazine. Before her journalism career, she worked mainly in public relations moving into writing when she was invited to launch Retail Watch, a publication covering retail and real estate across Europe. After some years of constant travelling, she tucked away her passport and concentrated on business writing, co-founding a successful regional business magazine. She has interviewed some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs who have built multi-million-pound businesses and reported on many science and technology firsts. She reports on the region’s thriving business economy from start-ups, family businesses and multi-million-pound corporations, to the professionals that support their growth and the institutions that educate the next generation of business leaders.