Compliance-as-a-service platform Laika raises $35M

by Paul Sawers | Nov 2, 2021 | Cybersecurity

“Compliance-as-a-service” platform Laika has raised $35 million in a series B round of funding from lead investor J.P. Morgan Growth Equity Partners, with participation from PayPal’s venture capital arm among other existing investors.

Founded in 2019, Laika essentially helps smaller software companies pass security audits, which puts them in a stronger position to attract larger enterprise customers. This is particularly notable at a time when companies are having to manage a growing bank of confidential data while adhering to regional regulations such as GDPR and CCPA, or existing industry-specific privacy regulations.

Overcome compliance obstacles

Companies operating in highly-regulated industries such as health, finance, or insurance usually have to meet the strictest of standards to operate legally. Moreover, large enterprises will likely only want to work with partner companies that adhere to the relevant ISO or SOC standard for their industry — but achieving this is a long and complex process. This is where Laika enters the fray, combining automated information security (InfoSec) workflows, audits, risk assessments, questionnaires, and “vendor due diligence” into a single platform — which companies pay for via a monthly subscription.

“Meeting compliance requirements for regulators or enterprise customers can be a huge obstacle for startups with innovative products but small teams,” Laika chief operating office (COO) Eva Pittas noted in a press release. “By transforming compliance into a frictionless, subscription-based digital experience, Laika transforms compliance from a sales obstacle into a growth lever for front-line sales and business development teams.”

The Laika platform comes with a bunch of pre-built integrations such as AWS, GitHub, and Datadog, which is used as part of the “evidence-gathering” process that auditors typically need to verify whether a business is correctly following all their InfoSec and privacy policies.

Acknowledging that compliance can never really be a fully automated endeavor, Laika also offers human subject-specific experts that work in tandem with its customers to attain certification.

Laika had previously raised around $13 million, and with its latest cash injection, the company said that it’s well-financed to build out additional automation features and integrate further audit-related tooling into its platform.