Group-IB

Group-IB is a cybersecurity company. It was founded in 2003 by Ilya Sachkov and Dmitry Volkov in Moscow, Russia.^[1]

Group-IB

Company type	Private
Industry	Cybercrime
Founded	Moscow, Russia
Founder	Dmitry Volkov Ilya Sachkov
Headquarters	Singapore
Key people	Dmitry Volkov, CEO Singapore Ilya Sachkov, founder and owner (37.5%)
Website	Singapore Website

In 2023, it spun off its Russian operations with its operations outside Russia led by Dmitry Volkov, a Russian national, and based in Singapore, while the Russian entity continues operations in Moscow under the F.A.C.C.T. name.

History

Group-IB was founded in 2003 by Ilya Sachkov and Dmitry Volkov in Russia, to provide cybercrime investigations and digital forensics services.^[2] In 2017, the company signed a data sharing agreement with INTERPOL, to coordinate the exchange of threat intelligence.^[3] The company moved to Singapore in 2019 and received support from the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore.^[4][5]

In 2019, the firm took 180,000 successful takedown request for Game of Thrones, reported $3 million worth of fund stolen from a Dutch-Bangla Bank ATM, and reported Turkish payment card details were being sold online.^[6][7][8]

In September 2021, Ilya Sachkov, its co-founder and CEO, was detained by Russian authorities for treason.^[9] He was sentenced to 14 years in prison.^[10] The Russian and international business were later split with the business sold in April 2023 to Russian management to be branded F.A.C.C.T.^[11][12] F.A.C.C.T. would market Group-IB products and services while being a separate entity allowing Group-IB to not directly have a presence in Russia.^[13] The move was reportedly because its Russian ties were hurting its business.^[14] It was reported that despite the business split, founder Ilya Sachkov remained the primary shareholder of both companies.^[15]

In December 2023, the company's Moscow spinoff F.A.C.C.T. discovered that a hacking group was targeting Russian companies with a war-related phishing attack.^[16] According to Substack, the Group-IB based in Singapore continues to be headed by Dmitry Volkov, a Russian national.^[17]

In July 2025, it was reported that Group-IB was acting as legal agent for Tencent, a company controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, in attempting to kill FreeWechat.com, an anti-censorship WeChat archive developed by Chinese censorship monitoring website GreatFire to enforce the Communist Party's Great Firewall.^[17][18][19]