Perseus is a newly born service platform backed by institutional investors, and aims to be the go-to partner for the German Mittelstand (SMEs) on all Cyber Security matters.
SMEs rarely have the time, resources and tools to independently take actions necessary to prevent data and information security related incidents, even though awareness of the existing threat is high. More than 70 percent of German companies were subjects of cybercrime activities within the last two years, but only 1 out of 10 SMEs holds an insurance policy that covers the resulting damages.
The current market offerings are fragmented, being either vertical-focused or niche, techy products, that are hard for non-specialists to decypher. Steffen Teske, Co-Founder: “With Perseus, we offer a one-stop solution, that is easy to understand and to adopt for small and medium businesses. Our product will be based on the individual needs of our end-customers.”
Sven Weizenegger, Co-Founder: “Throwing security products into your organisation is not the answer. Businesses need to understand their cyber security exposure and be prepared in case of a breach. We not only provide training to prevent a breach, but also a cyber security incident management support in case a breach does happen. SMEs need a partner in emergency situations.”
Being a platform enables Perseus to connect the services and to offer best-of-fit (tech-)solutions. In the near future, the team plans to add an industry-specific cyber insurance proposition to the portfolio of their services.
Co-Founder Inna Leontenkova states that the service concept can be compared to German automotive clubs. “We aim to support SMEs that deal with large amounts of personal data, and have been under pressure from increasing numbers of cyber attacks recently like WannaCry or Petya. Most risk exposure comes from small things that employees do incorrectly, so we focus on prevention - the human side of cybersecurity. Our training focusses especially on employees. The membership model is an easy solution and economies of scale allow us to keep the fee low.”
Furthermore, in May 2018, a new EU regulation concerning treatment of private information, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), will come into effect. This means for instance that SMEs need to take care of a new form of information handling in case of cyber attacks. The fines for non-compliance will be coming up to the higher of 4% or €20M of global revenues. Perseus can help in this matter to make SMEs ready for GDPR.