Guardsquare

Guardsquare develops mobile application security solutions that protect Android and iOS apps and their SDKs through code hardening, runtime protection, and threat monitoring. Its product family includes DexGuard for Android protection, iXGuard for iOS protection, AppSweep for free automated security testing, and ThreatCast for runtime threat monitoring — together covering the app security lifecycle from build-time hardening to live threat visibility once an app is in users’ hands.

Founded in 2014 by Heidi Rakels and Eric Lafortune and headquartered in Leuven, Belgium, Guardsquare traces some of its technical foundation to ProGuard, the widely-used open-source Android code optimizer Lafortune originally launched in 2002 — giving the company over two decades of cumulative expertise in Android code protection specifically. Battery Ventures invested in 2019, and the company has grown through acquisitions including App-Ray in 2020 and Extended Threat Defense technology acquired from Verimatrix in 2026.

Mobile app security is an increasingly important category as financial services, gaming, and healthcare apps become high-value attacker targets, and Guardsquare’s differentiation is depth of Android- and iOS-specific hardening expertise built over two decades rather than a general-purpose application security platform retrofitted for mobile. The company reports protecting “billions” of users across “thousands” of customers, though specific customer names and detailed scale figures are not disclosed publicly.