In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, cybersecurity has become a critical concern for businesses of all sizes. Cyber Upgrade, a Lithuania-based cybersecurity startup, recently made headlines by securing €650,000 in pre-seed funding to bolster its mission of providing accessible and inclusive cybersecurity solutions. This investment round was concluded last month and joined by venture capital firms like Firstprick, NGL ventures, and other business angels.
In an exclusive interview with 150Sec, Aurimas Bakas, co-founder of Cyber Upgrade said, “We fundraised because we felt that we found a really interesting niche and concept in general. As a result, we need to invest in the product to support our ideas and help to get them in the market.”
Bakas added, “Thus, a part of the investment will be spent on the product. The other part will be spent on marketing and business development efforts.”
Cyber Upgrade’s recent funding success is a testament to the growing recognition of the importance of cybersecurity for SMEs and fintechs.
“Time To Scale Cyber Governance”
Co-founders Bakas and Andrius Minkevičius have a history of success in the fintech sector.
Their previous venture, Paysolut, was a core banking system provider that they co-founded and later sold to SumUp – a London-based fintech — after a multi-year partnership between the two.
Talking about the motivation behind Cyber Upgrade, Bakas said, “We spent the recent 10 years in the fintech industry where we built critical infrastructure core banking solutions. Twenty-three fintech banks ran on our cloud with our technology and tools. Because of the product’s nature, we had to deal with cyber risks on multiple occasions as there is plenty of sensitive data in the financial industry.”
Bakas continued, “Such a setup formed a global cyber mindset and an idea on how to scale cyber governance concepts big time by utilizing automation and AI. This is how we see the future – automation and AI as cyber threats are getting more complex and humans will not be able to track everything.”
Comparing today’s landscape with the scenario five years ago, the co-founder said that “today we fight machines and AI engines most of the time.”
Pressing Need For Cyber Security in the Financial Industry
With over a decade of experience in building critical banking infrastructures, the co-founders have gained valuable insight into the cybersecurity needs of the financial industry.
Cyber Upgrade further revealed that it plans to design a solid proprietary AI model with the funding. According to Bakas, “this will allow for the inclusion of every team member in the cyber governance process, effectively bridging the gap between theoretical security measures and practical operational security.”
Ongoing regular and operational company wide iterations will enable the company to collect factual and hard evidence-based information about cyber defense lines. “This will lead to constant improvement, continuous monitoring, and audit ready documentation (and evidence) in one push of a button or audit reports will be submitted to the regulator/auditor automatically,” concluded Bakas.
