PRINCETON, N.J., Jul. 19, 2018 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — Edison Partners today announced leading a $10 million growth investment in Giant Oak, the Arlington, VA-based threat protection platform for government and financial services organizations. Giant Oak will use the funds to accelerate commercial market expansion and continued product innovation.

Giant Oak provides a SaaS platform, GOST (Giant Oak Search Technology), that allows its users to search the deep web and perform high-speed, large-scale, entity-specific screenings to discover, vet and continuously monitor security, law enforcement, compliance, fraud and other threats. GOST customers span government agencies and financial services institutions. U.S. homeland security and anti-money laundering (AML) compliance screening alone represent a $5 billion market opportunity.

“Government and commercial markets alike have increased need for big data and regulatory technologies that improve their screenings for risk,” said Tom Vander Schaaff, General Partner at Edison Partners, who led the investment. “Gary Shiffman and team have capital-efficiently built a negative search platform that’s smarter than Google, and are driving impressive growth in the government sector. We are honored to be Giant Oak’s partner in both deepening its footprint with government organizations and accelerating expansion into the commercial sector.”

Giant Oak CEO and Founder Dr. Gary Shiffman initially developed GOST to screen the big data of the deep and dark web to help solve human trafficking, warzone, and other national and high-security threats. Prior to GOST, the default negative media search solution was the use of generic search engines, which only cover the general purpose open web—approximately five percent of the searchable Internet — and lack the ability to search and continuously screen on large entity data sets. GOST, in contrast, allows users to perform negative media searches into the open and deep web quickly and reliably, utilizing risk-scoring methods that combine machine learning, AI, and behavioral science to improve performance across each search, while reducing time-intensive, error-prone, manual human costs.

“At Giant Oak, we are working to make it more difficult for bad actors to accomplish illicit goals. Our platform takes a big pile of hay where we’re looking for a needle, and makes it a small pile. When we’re successful, we make the world safer and more secure,” said Shiffman. “Well beyond the financial investment, the Edison team now joins our team. They bring the operating know-how and network we need to scale our growth and advance our product development, sales and marketing, and financial performance. I’m thrilled for the partnership.”

Edison Partners has financed and guided more than 200 private companies, a quarter of which have been in the enterprise solutions space. Notable exits include Archive Systems, Assessment Systems, Axent, eSentire, InSoft, Logfire, Marcam, Notable Solutions, Octagon, Tangoe, Telarix, VirtualEdge, Uptivity, and VFA. Current portfolio companies in the compliance and regulation technology sectors, specifically, include ComplySci, GAN Integrity and, Predata.

About Giant Oak
Arlington, VA-based Giant Oak is a data analytics software company led by behavioral scientists and software engineers who are expert in search technologies, people screening and national security. Founded in 2012, Giant Oak offers its customers unique threat protection using artificial intelligence and machine learning to support data analysis. The company’s software-based solution, GOST, is a tool that simplifies negative media searches that usually produce overwhelming amounts of information. GOST enables searches of both The Web and The Deep Web, picking up additional locations and information that go beyond Google/Bing index. For more information, visit http://www.giantoak.com.

About Edison Partners
For more than 30 years, Edison Partners has been helping CEOs and their executive teams navigate the entrepreneurial journey to build successful companies. Through the unique combination of growth capital and the Edison Edge platform, consisting of operating leverage, the Edison Director Network, and executive education, Edison employs a holistic approach to accelerating growth and creating value for businesses. Edison targets companies with $5 to $20 million in revenue in the financial technology, healthcare IT, and enterprise technology sectors. Edison investments also include buyouts, recapitalizations, spinouts and secondary stock purchases.

Edison’s active portfolio has created aggregated market value exceeding $10 billion. Its long-tenured team based in Princeton, NJ manages more than $1 billion in assets throughout the eastern United States.

SOURCE Edison Partners