Secure Practice provides cybersecurity to the business sector through cloud services. The Trondheim-based company now has users in 30 countries.
Cybercriminals very often misuse emails in connection with fraud and hacking. Anyone can be affected, and the misuse often leads to financial losses and loss of confidential data.
Secure Practice’s first product, MailRisk, was created to combat this type of crime. The product is an icon added to Outlook and Office 365 that employees can click if they receive a suspicious email. The user then sees a window that provides guidance regarding the credibility of the email, while the cloud service collects data about the suspicious email. The product quickly uncovers if more people have been affected, and dangerous emails that have passed through spam filters and antivirus software can be rendered harmless.
We are on our way to providing businesses with a complete platform that manages human cyber risk.
Customer growth and new services
The Trondheim-based company has launched several security and privacy tools after MailRisk in 2018, such as a service for measuring human cyber risk. They currently have more than 50,000 users from 500 businesses in 30 countries.
“We are now doing much more than ‘just’ analysing suspicious emails. We are on our way to providing businesses with a complete platform that manages human cyber risk”, says Erlend Andreas Gjære, co-founder and CEO of Secure Practice.
EU funding
He says that the support from Innovation Norway has been crucial to the initiative.
“The start-up phase is critical, and the support meant that we were able to quickly start a market clarification project in 2017. We then received commercialisation grants and were able to increase our efforts on both marketing work and development, in close collaboration with our first pilot customers. We were also granted additional commercialisation funding when we received the Seal of Excellence from the EU, which was the result of our application to the SME Instrument programme.”
Secure Practice has received funding, advisory services and participated in several courses organised by Innovation Norway.
“The founders have impressed us with the marketing work they have done in the project. The combination of technical and market expertise is quite unique in the entrepreneurial world. They have worked methodically with the market and been active regarding the media, which we believe is an important success factor for a start-up company”, says Janina Lamøy, financial adviser at Innovation Norway Trøndelag.
Help from Innovation Norway in London
In 2018, the company won the Outstanding Security Performance Award for ‘Best New Security Product’. The award attracted valuable attention, and provided an easier way in to both customers and partners. Typical partners are IT operating providers and security companies. Customers can be found in both the public and private sectors - in Norway and abroad.
“With help from Innovation Norway in London, we have conducted market research and mapped customer needs, and have a good plan for internationalisation and further scaling of the company”, says Gjære.