[CONTENU PARTENAIRE] Faced with the resurgence of cyberattacks, companies are forced to strengthen their protection systems. SoSafe offers an original approach whose effectiveness has been proven, based on behavioral sciences. With its second generation awareness platform, SoSafe puts user engagement and customer needs at the center of its concerns. The company offers personalized and stimulating training, so that each employee becomes a key player in the fight against cyber threats. Jean Baptiste Roux, SoSafe’s Southern Europe Sales Director answers our questions.
Can you introduce SoSafe?
SoSafe enables companies to build a culture of cybersecurity and mitigate risk through its GDPR-compliant awareness programs. The company was founded in Cologne (Germany) in 2018 by Dr. Niklas Hellemann, graduate in psychology and former consultant at BCG, Lukas Schaefer, digitalization expert and former consultant at McKinsey, and Felix Schuerholz, experienced software engineer. Today, the company has 370 employees, divided between Paris, Berlin, Cologne, Amsterdam and London.
Our solution is applicable to all industries that process critical information, such as finance, banking, logistics, transportation, and healthcare facilities. We also work with public services. Our platform is available in thirty languages and we currently have over 1.7 million users worldwide. For a solution to work, it must appeal to users. That is why we attach great importance to the needs of our customers and their requests.
In what context does SoSafe intervene?
In recent years, the number of online attacks has exploded, with the emergence of increasingly structured and powerful criminal organizations, which use all available communication tools to achieve their ends. Mails, text messages, phone calls, communication applications, all represent entry points for hackers. We are thus living in the “golden age of ransomware” according to the European Cybersecurity Agency (ENISA).
Cybercrime uses the uncertain social and economic context to achieve its ends, i.e. extract sensitive information or create ransomware attacks. The Covid-19 pandemic has been a boon for hackers, as has the war in Ukraine today. The mode of operation is quite simple and recurrent: using psychological levers to push a user to click on a fraudulent email or link. These levers can be curiosity provoked by current events, fear, empathy or even generosity.
Is the human aspect essential in the fight against cybercrime?
It is crucial because more than 90% of online attacks require human intervention! Interaction is required to be able to break into a computer system and block it. Among the techniques used by the hackers, there is the “fraud with the president”: it is a question of usurping the identity of a leader of a company by imitating his address, sending an email to an employee of the finance department in order to to put pressure on him and ask him to make a bank transfer quickly, for example. The hacker exploits a moment of tension and stress to lead an employee to make an error. SoSafe, with its more psychological approach, makes it possible to create a real human firewall to avoid these cyber attacks.
What solutions does SoSafe offer?
Our platform trains employees who are not prepared for the subject or who are not interested in it but who are surrounded by an IT environment that is increasingly rich and difficult to master. The rise of telework, the ever-increasing use of the smartphone, represent contexts conducive to attack. You must therefore learn to be suspicious, to detect more or less obvious clues to detect a fraudulent email. These good reflexes are acquired through effective, repeated and controlled training.
First, SoSafe experts take stock of the cybersecurity measures taken by a company. Then we set up e-learning, very interactive learning modules, which allow employees to really engage in the process. Our phishing mail simulations are then used to test the teams. Depending on the results obtained, in particular the click rate on fraudulent links, we can determine the level of maturity of an employee and thus personalize and complete their learning throughout the year. Our platform therefore evolves at the pace of employees.
Today, zero risk does not exist, but our role at SoSafe is to make it as low as possible. Computer hackers manage to implement sophisticated new methods very quickly. Our mission is therefore to be constantly innovating to counter these attacks, but also to inform our customers when they are particularly exposed in order to react as quickly as possible.
This content was produced with SCRIBEO. The BFMBUSINESS editorial staff did not participate in the production of this content.