Highlights –  

  • The firm aims to simplify the development of trust between a customer and software supplier, especially in the areas of security and data privacy compliance.
  • Kintent was launched with the motive to offer a full-proof solution than those already on the market.

It’s essential for technology vendors to undergo client security scrutiny, which is mostly a time-consuming process involving a lot of questionnaires that are exhaustive. Kintent, an evolving startup that has automated this process, has announced a series A funding of USD 18 million. With this, the company has raised a total of USD 22 million to date. The funding was led by OpenView, with Tola Capital as a follow-on investor. With the fund, Kintent plans to expand its sales and product teams to better serve its growing customer base and surplus lead flow.

Kintent, a startup developing various automation systems to address enterprise compliance workloads, automates security compliance audit preparation, with the use of Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP). It automatically suggests answers to security questionnaires. Further, it creates a live, attractive website and API that enables enterprises to share and show compliance with their customers.

Kintent’s aims to simplify the development of trust between a customer and software supplier, especially in the areas of security and data privacy compliance. The latest round of funding is indicative that the firm has perfected its business model and has shown its path to profitability.

The news is of great importance for technical decision-makers as it does away with the need for them to make assumptions, which includes the legitimacy of a company’s marketing and sales materials.

The funding also proves that Kintent’s core product or service can be produced, will work as expected, and has a market.

Streamlining compliance, enabling revenue

Kintent was founded with an aim to provide a system of record for trust. The first use case was for information security and data privacy compliance.

One of the firm’s products, Trust Cloud, makes it easier for businesses to gauge how they can stay compliant with a given standard, measure the present state of compliance and get suggestions on how to improve

First, Trust Cloud assesses the state of the technology’s system, and the types of data being collected and stored. It also measures how compatible the systems are with the standards the firm is trying to meet. The Trust Cloud then produces a number of best practices to stay in compliance with your chosen standard, subject to how you categorize your data. Finally, it gives the way to continue testing to validate what you’ve done and that you’re still in compliance.

The other product, TrustShare, uses a live, auto-generated portal to share data privacy and security information with customers. Then there’s TrustOps, which has been designed to streamline adherence to compliance frameworks such as the California Consumer Privacy Act and the General Data Protection Regulation.

“When it comes to security questionnaires and compliance, I feel the entire SaaS sector needs a kick in the pants. Currently, the entire procedure is a hilarious absurdity. The majority of businesses perform the necessities to simply tick this box and obtain compliance certifications,” said co-founder Sravish Sridhar. He added, “Every sales team strives to go through the security questionnaire process as quickly as possible by answering questions that reflect what they believe the business customer wants to see as against the truth. Compliance is just not truthful today.”

Kintent can be used by CISOs to objectively assess and receive vendor security and compliance data. Many CISOs also use Trust Cloud in businesses to make revenue from their their security and compliance programs. As a result, instead of zero-trust, Kintent offers explicit, tangible trust, where business trust is constantly confirmed programmatically.

Mackey Craven, one of OpenView’s tech industry angel investors, mentioned that very occasionally one would come across a firm that’s at a better position to transform such a large industry as governance, risk and compliance (GRC).

“By transforming check-the-box compliance from a cost center into a revenue-generating function, Kintent is directly enabling the growth of their customers and experiencing great acceptance in the industry, while also building a more trusted community in which to do business,” Craven added.

Furthermore, Akshay Bhushan, a partner at Tola Capital,  talked about his first-hand experience with Kintent which poses the ability to help high-growth companies across several industries execute enterprise acquisitions faster.

“The platform provides sales and operational leaders with the tools they need to deal with IT and security objections ahead of time, or else sales will be delayed by months. Sales teams use Kintent to win business agreements by turning around questionnaires in hours. We’re ecstatic to support the Kintent team in their effort to establish the Trust Cloud,” Bhushan stated.

There are several firms that are often in competitive situations with Kintent. Other vendors offering products that promise to simplify various compliance processes include Vanta, Drata, Anecdotes, Secureframe, and Osano. But 87% of all competing offers have been won by Kintent in one year. Other companies, including in competition appear to be marketing “check-the-box” compliance. Their proposition appears to be to put compliance on autopilot and to use automation to collect the bare minimum of proof needed to obtain a compliance certification speedily.

“We needed the means to automate security assessments, provide transparency to our customers and partners about our security program and empower our business divisions to achieve and maintain compliance with ease. Kintent’s AI and API-based automation combines sales and security procedures into one platform, allowing us to speed sales and maintain client confidence,” said Andrew Smeaton, CISO of DataRobot.

“One of our customers who checked out some of our competitors jokingly called them ‘SOC-in-a-Box’ It’s also fascinating to see them compete in the market, using their venture capital funding to cannibalize one another’s sales by cutting prices every quarter. Even while Kintent costs more than our competitors, we still win because our customers prefer revenue-generating compliance that leads to sales over check-the-box compliance that only obtains a certification,” said Sridhar.

Kintent aims to transform the present state of affairs from check-the-box compliance to trust. The firm is working to create a future where suppliers and customers may communicate security and compliance information with each other using APIs. As a result, instead of zero-trust, Kintent will establish a world of transparent, measurable trust, where business trust is constantly confirmed programmatically.