Relocates Headquarters to Boston with Plans to Double Size Again in 2021

BOSTON  – January 11, 2021

Black Kite, the cyber risk ratings company formerly known as NormShield, today revealed its new name, logo, and headquarters relocation from Vienna, VA to Boston. While the award-winning software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform remains the same, the rebranding aligns the company’s vision with its capability to expand cyber risk visibility to third parties and supply chains.  

The Black Kite transformation follows a significant year for the company. Annual recurring revenues doubled and the company secured $7.5 million in Series-A funding in 2020. The total number of customers also grew by more than 400% over the past two years.

“In the last month alone, the SolarWinds cyberattack showed what kind of damage threat actors can do to government and corporate networks,” said Paul Paget, CEO of Black Kite. “The complexity of recent cyberattacks shines a bright light on the need for organizations to identify cyber threats and measure the potential impact to their third parties and supply chains. Business leaders need to determine the cyber investments that will have the greatest effect on reducing their organization’s financial, reputational, and business risk.”

Black Kite plans to double its employee headcount for the second year straight, especially in sales and customer success roles.

“A company of our size and growth trajectory goes where the talent is,” Paget said. “We have maintained offices in Boston over the past year and have consistently found talented, innovative, and motivated employees. Making Boston our HQ was a no-brainer and we look forward to becoming an integral member of the local business community.”

Black Kite will continue to expand its go-to-market capabilities and accelerate the development of its technology platform, which is already used by 160 customers in the global financial, healthcare, retail, and technology sectors. The platform fills a fundamental security gap by making it easy for businesses to non-invasively quantify and monitor cyber risk across thousands of third parties, suppliers, and partners. Black Kite closes this gap with defensible, clear-cut data, and minimal false positives.

The Black Kite platform offers:

  • A complete view of vulnerabilities and attack patterns using 20 categories and more than 400 controls. The completeness of the data provides accuracy and breadth, making the Black Kite platform 3x more comprehensive than the competitors.
  • Transparent and standards-based methodology, such as the MITRE Cyber Threat Susceptibility Assessment (CTSA), Common Weakness Risk Analysis Framework (CWRAF), Common Weakness Scoring System (CWSS), and Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
  • Risk quantification by leveraging Open FAIR™ — the only international standard Value at Risk (VaR) model for cybersecurity and operational risk — to prioritize financial resource allocation and prevent financial impact. Black Kite is the only cyber risk rating system that calculates the probable financial loss risk in the case of a cyber breach.

About Black Kite:  Black Kite serves cyber risk professionals looking to quantify and maintain visibility of their risk exposure. The platform provides full visibility into an organization’s cyber posture, using the same open-source intelligence tools and techniques hackers use. Unlike other cyber rating products, there’s no “secret sauce.” The process generating every third-party risk assessment is standards-based and fully transparent so that all users understand exactly where their results come from. Why? It’s really this simple: you shouldn’t be flying blind.

For more on Black Kite’s products and services, contact:
Danielle Lewan
Director of Marketing
[email protected]