UK digital security companies have raised £9.64b in equity to date, with funding peaking at £1.78b in 2021 before settling into a steadier annual rhythm of around £700m to £800m. Just under two-thirds of all the capital these companies have raised (65%) has arrived since the start of 2020, as cyber threats, identity fraud, and data-protection rules pushed security spending up the corporate agenda.
We’ve ranked the top 100 digital security companies by total equity raised (all data sourced from the Beauhurst platform).
An overview of the digital security sector
Digital security covers companies building the tools that protect data, identities, transactions, and infrastructure from misuse — spanning cybersecurity threat detection, identity verification and fraud prevention, encryption and post-quantum cryptography, regulatory compliance software, and the managed services that keep it all running. In practice the UK sector splits into a few distinct camps: identity and anti-fraud platforms, core cyber-defence and threat-detection tools, crypto and blockchain security, and a long tail of IT-support and consultancy firms for whom security is one service among many. The classification overlaps heavily with application software, payment processing, and risk and compliance.
There are around 6,500 active digital security companies in the UK, a figure that has grown 114% over the past decade from roughly 3,000 at the end of 2015 — slower than newer sectors, reflecting a market that was already well-established a decade ago. Together they report £130b in turnover and employ an estimated 586,000 people, though those totals are inflated by large incumbents such as BT. The £9.64b raised makes this one of the smaller sectors by equity, and company formation has actually cooled in recent years, suggesting consolidation rather than a fresh wave of startups.
Key findings
- The sector is led by BT, the telecoms incumbent, which has raised £1.00b — though security is only one strand of a sprawling business, and the figure reflects BT’s scale rather than a pure-play security raise. That total represents 10.4% of all the equity raised across the sector, a relatively low share for a number-one company that underlines how broadly capital is spread. BT’s presence at the top, alongside other diversified incumbents, is itself a feature of a sector where security is often a division rather than a whole company.
- The top five span the sector’s range: behind BT sit OneTrust (£699m, privacy and risk management software), GB Group (£568m, identity verification and fraud prevention), Quantexa (£374m, AI-driven data and risk analysis), and Copper (£238m, digital-asset custody and security). Between them the top five have raised £2.88b, or 30% of the sector total, and the top 100 together account for £7.30b — roughly 76% of all digital-security equity, a fairly concentrated profile.
- Geographically, London dominates with 54 of the top 100, but the standout is the North West, which takes second place with 13 companies — ahead of the South East’s 12 — an unusually strong showing for a region that rarely features so prominently in tech rankings, with PortSwigger, Red Sift, Cado Security, and Netacea among its security names. The remaining entries are spread across 12 regions in total, reaching both halves of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and the Midlands.
- By stage of evolution the top 100 is notable for how many companies have already been acquired: 11 are classified as exited, the highest of any sector Beauhurst tracks, alongside 44 growth-stage and 22 venture-stage businesses. Across the wider staged universe of 1,157 companies the distribution is unusually even — 28% established, 26% seed-stage, 23% venture-stage — and the exit rate of 6.0% is the highest of any sector, marking digital security as an M&A machine where successful companies are reliably bought rather than scaled to independence.
