Cybercrime is rising and is expected to cost organisations an alarming $6 trillion in 2021 alone. With 85% of attacks traced back to the human factor, agile and human-centric security awareness platforms are the need of the hour. Jumping on to the bandwagon of the startups that are attempting to combat the challenge is a German startup that is offering cybersecurity training to corporate clients.
Taking a uniquely user-centered approach to cyber security, Cologne-based SoSafe’s awareness platform uses insights from behavioral science to drive sustainable behavioral change and the startup has now raised $73 million in a Series B funding round to do so.
Driving behavioural change
The investment was led by expansion-stage specialists Highland Europe with other participants that included existing investors such as Acton Capital, Global Founders Capital and SAP Hybris founder and Celonis Advisory Board member Carsten Thoma, La Famiglia and Adjust founder Christian Henschel.
While many awareness solutions focus solely on checking off compliance requirements, SoSafe’s mission is to disrupt the status quo and let employees take a center-stage in organizational security.
Embedded deep gamification
End-users enjoy the deep gamification embedded throughout the platform while admins benefit from the easy setup and high degree of customization that enables continuous monitoring of human-based security risk. By fostering and scaling security culture, organizations can thus protect themselves from costly attacks.
Founded in Cologne in 2018 by Dr. Niklas Hellemann, Lukas Schaefer and Felix Schuerholz, the startup has become the go-to trusted security awareness provider for more than 1,500 organizations worldwide including Aldi, Ceconomy, Taylor Wessing, Vattenfall and Valtech. It is now one of the largest awareness platforms based in Europe and has been recognized in independent industry reports from analysts Gartner and Forrester.
Global expansion on cards
Dr. Niklas Hellemann, psychologist, co-founder and managing director of SoSafe said: “Challenging the existing paradigms in security awareness and human risk management, we have seen tremendous adoption of our platform and extraordinary growth. We will now increase our international footprint further as well as advance our position as the leading second-generation security awareness and human risk platform, deeply rooted in behavioral science.”
Gajan Rajanathan, partner at Highland Europe said: “SoSafe has built a trusted cybersecurity awareness and testing platform, underpinned by behavioral analytics and human risk scoring that sustainably protects the most important threat surface in cybersecurity – human security breaches.” Lead investor Highland Europe has previously backed successful SaaS companies such as Adjust, Contentsquare, Supermetrics, Nexthink and WeTransfer, as well as security leaders Malwarebytes, Cobalt, and ActiveFence.
Carsten Thoma, founder of SAP Hybris and Celonis Board member, added: “The team at SoSafe are now entering the next stage of organizational scaling that I know very well from building a global SaaS business.”
The existing players in this space as cyber seccurity concerns become a significant one are London and Amsterdam-based cybersecurity startup Hadrian, London’s Red Sift, Digital Fingerprints from Poland and Passbase in Berlin.
