These 15 European startups are set to take the cybersecurity world by storm

Google has announced the startups chosen for its Cybersecurity Startups Growth Academy. The 15 selected startups are from eight countries and were chosen from over 120 applicants. They have made significant contributions, from securing health applications to protecting educators and safeguarding the clean water supply chain.

The selected companies will receive mentoring sessions from Google experts, including former VirusTotal and Mandiant startups. Additionally, they will have opportunities to network with other cybersecurity entrepreneurs at events scheduled throughout Europe this year.

The companies that have been selected are:

• Alice Biometrics (Spain): Startup awarded for identity verification software built on a proprietary AI engine.
• Astran (France): Confidential Data Cloud solution that enables companies to unlock cloud adoption without encryption keys.
• BlackDice (UK / Spain): Company that helps telco operators protect their subscribers from cyber attacks using machine learning and predictive tech to identify patterns.
• Build38 (Germany / Spain): Company that provides mobile app protection solutions, combining AI and the strongest shielding technology — and serving customers from the financial sector to public transport to health care.
• CrowdSec (France): Threat intelligence company that offers participative behavioral protection from malicious IP addresses.
• Cryptr (France): Company that offers a plug-and-play authentication platform enabling software to manage all authentication strategies, like single sign-on, with just a few lines of code.
• eID Easy (Estonia): Marketplace of qualified electronic signature APIs connecting document workflow platforms to worldwide certificate authorities with one single integration and contract.
• Elemendar (UK): Company building AI that reads cyber threat reports by humans and turns them into industry-standard structured information.
• GoodAccess (Czechia): Global cybersecurity platform for the age of remote working, which brings to the world the simplest way to deploy Zero Trust Network Access.
• Nymiz (Spain): Startup offers AI-based personal data anonymization software — enabling you to “protect your data while unlocking its value.”
• Passbolt (Luxembourg): Company serving 15,000 organizations worldwide — “including F500 companies, the defense industry, universities” — which builds an open-source, enterprise password manager.
• Risk Ledger (UK): Provider of supply chain security monitoring software that aims to improve the “security maturity” of the global supply chain ecosystem.
• Secfense (Poland): Startup that facilitates the adoption of MFA in big organizations thanks to code-less integration that takes minutes instead of weeks or months.
• Secjur (Germany): Provider of AI-based compliance tools that aims to put compliance, data protection, information security and whistleblowing “on autopilot”.
• Sentryc (Germany): Provider of brand protection software that works to monitor and “stop product piracy on the internet”.

“Involving startups in Europe’s forward defense isn’t only good strategy; increasingly, it’s a matter of urgency.. As many as 92% of the region’s SMEs recognize that cybersecurity is important to them, but only 16% feel very well prepared for an attack. That’s according to new research we’ve released in partnership with Kantar — “Europe’s SMEs in the Digital Decade 2030” — which also finds that attackers targeting unprepared companies can get more data in less time than ever before, due to the smallest cybersecurity lapses,” Royal Hansen, VP of Engineering for Privacy, Safety, and Security at Google, wrote in a blog post.

Hansen continued: “As part of our Grow with Google programs, we developed dedicated training to help SME owners strengthen their cybersecurity skills. They will find resources on mastering the basics of cyber risks, training employees, securing employee devices, networks, systems and software, and creating secure online customer experiences. We have provided this content in English and will progressively make it available across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, in 18 additional languages.”

Brian Honan, CEO at BH Consulting, welcomes this initiative from Google and hopes it will bring new applications and services onto the market with security built in from the beginning and not bolted on as an afterthought.

“It is also important to note that with the new requirements for built-in security as part of the EU Cyber Resilience Act and other regulations, that companies looking to launch new products and services onto the market should look to this program for inspiration on how to achieve that,” he added.