Defguard secures €1.2M in pre-seed
Polish startup Defguard has secured over €1.2 million (PLN 5.2 million) in a pre-seed round to develop its self-hosted, open-source platform for secure access and identity management.
The funding round was led by the new Polish VC fund Hard2beat, with participation from SMOK Ventures, S20 Team, and notable angel investors. The announcement was made during the Hard2beat Connect event, which marked the debut of the VC’s first portfolio companies.
Defguard addresses the growing need for data-sovereign cybersecurity solutions in Europe, offering a robust alternative to foreign cloud-based platforms. Tailored for public institutions and highly regulated sectors, the platform allows full control over infrastructure with strong authentication protocols, real-time monitoring, and scalable access management.
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What sets Defguard apart is its proprietary integration of multi-factor authentication (MFA) directly into the WireGuard protocol—a move that closes a long-standing security gap in modern VPN technology. The solution is especially relevant for organizations with strict compliance needs, such as those in government, finance, and healthcare.
Funding details:
€700K from Hard2beat VC
€520K from SMOK Ventures, S20 Team, and angel investors, including Łukasz Jesis, founder of Xopero, Piotr and Tomasz Karwatka, serial entrepreneurs and investors, and Founders of ISEC, specialists in penetration testing and IT security.
“The surge in demand for transparent and self-hosted security infrastructure gives Defguard a real edge,” noted Maciej Zawadziński, Managing Partner at Hard2beat VC. “Their MFA-for-WireGuard implementation makes them one of the most promising teams in deep tech cybersecurity.”
Next steps:
The capital will be used to expand the development and security teams, conduct compliance audits, enhance core features, and scale go-to-market activities. A key priority will be strengthening its open-source community, ensuring that adoption can grow organically across Europe.
As Poland and the EU push for digital sovereignty and local control over critical systems, Defguard is positioning itself as a trusted enabler of the next generation of cybersecurity infrastructure.
