What happened
Augmentt, an Ottawa-based startup, has closed a CAD $18 million Series A funding round, led by growth-equity firm Camber Partners.
Augmentt’s platform helps managed service providers (MSPs) monitor and manage security and compliance across small and medium-sized businesses’ cloud-based and SaaS applications, with particular focus on Microsoft ecosystems.
Who is affected
- MSPs (Managed Service Providers): The investment accelerates Augmentt’s roadmap, giving MSPs more powerful tools to deliver security and compliance services at scale.
- SMBs (Small and Medium Businesses): Through their MSPs, SMBs will benefit from stronger oversight, better SaaS posture management, and improved protection across cloud applications.
- Cloud-heavy organizations reliant on SaaS platforms: Especially those using Microsoft 365, Augmentt’s platform is optimized for that environment.
Why CISOs should care
- SaaS usage and cloud application sprawl continue rising, increasing the attack surface for organizations. A tool like Augmentt helps MSPs, and by extension their clients, keep control over security settings, compliance, and posture across multiple SaaS tenants.
- As organizations outsource IT and security operations to MSPs, security responsibility doesn’t disappear; proper SaaS governance and monitoring are crucial to prevent misconfiguration, data leakage, and compliance failures.
- The infusion of capital signals investor confidence in scalable cloud- and SaaS-security solutions. For CISOs considering third-party risk and MSP partnerships, vendors such as Augmentt may become key components of a secure cloud strategy.
3 Practical Actions for CISOs
- Audit your SaaS footprint: Map all SaaS and cloud applications in use across your organization (or that your MSP manages). Unmanaged or shadow-IT SaaS subscriptions can hide risk.
- Require MSPs to provide unified security/posture reporting: If you rely on MSPs, ensure they deliver consistent security posture monitoring and compliance audits across all tenants and SaaS apps. Tools optimized for MS365 or multi-tenant SaaS can help.
- Design MSP contracts with SaaS-security SLAs: Embed clear security and compliance SLAs in contracts with MSPs, including visibility requirements, regular posture assessments, and incident response support for SaaS apps.