Moody’s, Israel’s Team8 Invest $25M In Joint Cyber Risk Venture

Moody’s Corporation and Team8, an Israeli company-building venture firm in the cybersecurity space, announced the completion of a $25 million investment on Wednesday in VisibleRisk, a joint venture launched by the two parties in 2019. VisibleRisk is led by Derek Vadala and Yigael Berger and leverages Moody’s expertise in risk measurement and Team8’s expertise in cybersecurity technologies, to evaluate enterprise cyber risk.

In addition to the investment, VisibleRisk announced the launch of a Cyber Rating product, building on the collaboration between Moody’s and Team8 to develop a global standard for assessing corporate cyber risk. The Cyber Ratings are based on cyber-risk quantification, which allows companies to benchmark their cyber risks against those of their peers, and to better understand and manage the impact of cyber threats to their businesses, according to the announcement. The ratings take into account three main factors: an organization’s susceptibility to attack given its business profile, its ability to manage risk, and its ability to absorb the financial impact of a potential cybersecurity attack.

“Translating cyber risk for business executives who are not domain experts is paramount to successfully managing risk,” said Vadala, who serves as VisibleRisk’s CEO. “By quantifying a company’s risk exposure in economic terms, VisibleRisk is providing decision-makers with an actionable, real-time benchmark to best manage cyber risk and improve resilience.”

Nadav Zafrir, Team8’s managing partner, said: “At a time of intense digital transformation, accelerating hyper-connectivity and hybrid working environments, confidence in digital infrastructure is of paramount importance to business leaders. Cyber risk and business risk are inextricably linked, and it is only by striking a balance between security, productivity, privacy and distributed working that enterprises can surmount these challenges while driving innovation.”

“Moody’s investment in VisibleRisk aligns with our global integrated risk assessment strategy and focus on cyber security as an important element of understanding and managing enterprise risk,” said David Platt, chief strategy officer at Moody’s. “We are pleased to deepen our relationship with VisibleRisk as they launch their innovative Cyber Rating to help customers better understand and confidently manage their cyber risks.”