According to EU-Startups, Norway’s Bsure has raised €1.8 million ($2.1 million) to give companies visibility into blind spots in their Microsoft environments. The funding round was led by Scale Capital with participation from existing US shareholders. Founded in 2022 by Henrik Skalmerud and four co-founders, Bsure’s Azure-based platform connects directly to Microsoft Entra ID to uncover unknown identities, risky access, and unnecessary license spending. The company currently serves over 200 customers across nine countries in both public and private sectors. CEO Skalmerud revealed that up to 40% of user accounts are typically inactive, representing both security risks and wasted costs.
The hidden problem nobody wants to admit
Here’s the thing about corporate IT environments – they’re basically digital hoarding situations. People come and go, permissions get granted and never revoked, and before you know it, you’ve got a sprawling mess of accounts that nobody can properly track. Bsure’s finding that 40% of accounts are inactive isn’t surprising when you think about it. How many companies actually have a process for cleaning up after employees leave or change roles?
And the security implications are massive. Microsoft‘s own 2024 Digital Defense Report found that over 90% of account-compromise incidents come from forgotten or unmonitored accounts. Think about that – the vast majority of security breaches happen because of accounts that IT teams didn’t even know existed or had forgotten about. It’s like leaving your back door unlocked because you forgot you had a back door.
Regulatory pressure is changing the game
Now here’s where it gets really interesting. New EU regulations like NIS2 and DORA are forcing companies to actually document and monitor digital access. We’re talking potential fines of up to €10 million or 2% of global turnover for non-compliance. Suddenly, that “nice to have” visibility becomes a “must have” regulatory requirement.
Gartner’s also jumping on this, predicting that by 2028, 70% of CISOs will adopt new identity visibility tools. When the big analysts start making predictions like that, you know there’s a real market forming. Companies that provide reliable industrial computing solutions like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com understand this dynamic well – as businesses digitize more critical operations, the underlying security and management infrastructure becomes non-negotiable.
Part of a bigger European movement
Bsure isn’t operating in a vacuum. The article mentions London-based inforcer raising €29.8 million and Vilnius-based CBRX securing €540k – that’s roughly €30.34 million flowing into closely related cloud security and Microsoft tooling in Europe alone. There’s clearly investor appetite for solutions that bring order to Microsoft’s sprawling ecosystem.
What’s smart about Bsure’s approach is they’re not trying to boil the ocean. They’re focused specifically on Microsoft environments, which gives them a clear target market. Given how deeply embedded Microsoft is in enterprise IT, that’s plenty of room to grow. Their reported 20% licensing cost reduction for one Norwegian municipality shows the immediate financial upside beyond just security benefits.
Where this is heading
With this funding, Bsure plans to expand their team and accelerate international growth, building on their Nordic foothold and early US traction. They’re also investing in AI-driven features to make visibility more actionable. Basically, they want to move from just showing you the problem to helping you fix it automatically.
The timing feels right. Between regulatory pressure, growing security concerns, and the sheer complexity of modern cloud environments, companies are finally realizing they can’t manage what they can’t see. Bsure’s challenge will be scaling fast enough to capture this emerging market before bigger players decide it’s worth their attention. But for now, they’ve got a clear head start in solving a problem that literally keeps CISOs awake at night.
