Touchstone Innovations invests another £3.85m in Garrison Technology

Touchstone Innovations announced on Monday that it led a £12.0m funding round in Garrison Technology - a cyber security company based in London.

The AIM-traded firm said it committed £3.85m to the round alongside BGF Ventures, NM Capital and existing angel investors.

It first invested in Garrison in 2015 and following the latest investment, now holds a 22.5% stake in the company.

Touchstone said Garrison had progressed rapidly, attracting new investors pricing the round at a significant uplift in valuation, which was likely to result in a net fair value gain on Touchstone’s existing investment of £3.0m.

It said Garrison was addressing the large and growing enterprise cyber security market estimated to be worth $23bn and growing at 10% CAGR.

The company developed an anti-malware product that effectively blocked internet-borne targeted attacks.

It was founded by an experienced team of cyber security professionals from Detica Group, the security focused technology group that was acquired by BAE Systems in 2008.

CEO Dave Garfield formerly started and ran Detica's cybersecurity division, growing the business rapidly before leaving to start Garrison Technology in 2014, Touchstone explained, with co-founder and CTO Henry Harrison formerly a senior technology strategy director at BAE Detica.

The new funding would enable the company to accelerate product development and commercialisation, continuing to grow its team in advance of formally launching its product to market.

“Almost daily we read how major enterprises and governments are suffering from targeted and high-impact cyber-crime,” said Touchstone’s director of technology ventures Jon Edington.

“Garrison's solution directly addresses this problem with an innovative and differentiated technology that has been shown to effectively remove whole classes of cyber threat.

“The company is led by a top quality, ambitious and commercially minded management team, operating in a high growth global market, so all of the key ingredients are in place to enable us to build a substantial business.”