Seven cybersecurity companies have started in the fourth cohort of the Cyber Accelerator, Tehnopol announced. The programme belongs to Tehnopol Accelerator; its partners are RIA, Estonia's Information System Authority, and the ECCC, the European Union's competence centre for cybersecurity. Its purpose is to help young cybersecurity firms finish new products and services and take them to market.
Tehnopol describes the work in one sentence: Over the seven-month programme, the selected companies will develop their products and services with the support of experienced mentors and industry experts.
Each company can also receive up to EUR 60,000 in grant funding. Support covers product development, the business model, market entry and preparation for fundraising, with guidance from RIA experts, Tehnopol mentors, entrepreneurs and investors.
Several of the selected products are aimed at ordinary companies rather than at security specialists. Jaculus Consulting is developing Intrudect, a self-hosted platform that detects suspicious activity in a company's internal network and is designed to be accessible to small and medium-sized enterprises. Privatron is building a cyber risk management platform for assessing and monitoring the risks that come from a company's suppliers; according to Tehnopol the software assesses suppliers automatically and makes it easier for a company to show that it follows the rules on cybersecurity, data protection and artificial intelligence. CyberEducation is developing a mobile Cyber Escape Room, built inside a trailer and brought to the client's premises, where employees practise on simulated attacks.
The other four work on fraud and data protection. Culfig's PhishTriage is a browser extension that assesses whether a suspicious email or website can be trusted. Superior Est's ScamSense detects suspicious behavioural patterns during and after phone calls and alerts a trusted contact. Glazer Technologies is developing an intelligence collection and analysis platform that uses artificial intelligence, and Transpara Labs' CryptoMove uses encryption to protect personal data collected by video surveillance systems.
Part of the money comes from the European Union: the Digital Europe Programme and the ECCC co-fund the project.
Source: Tehnopol, . The text above is our own summary; the words in quotation marks are the source's.
What this means for an Estonian entrepreneur
Two of the seven products are built around tasks that ordinary companies now face: watching their own network and assessing the cyber risks of their suppliers, including showing that the rules are followed. For an Estonian entrepreneur this is a signal of where demand is expected: buyers and partners increasingly ask a supplier to show how it manages cyber risk. A company that sells to larger organisations should be ready to answer such an assessment in writing.
A regulated financial company that must document its ICT risks and its ICT suppliers can order the risk management framework and the register of suppliers from us. ICT risk management and compliance for regulated companies
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