Scaling Cyber

About Scaling Cyber

Where cybersecurity founders and leaders from all over the world share their journeys of growth, challenges, and global expansion. scalingcyber.substack.com (https://scalingcyber.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Scaling Stories from Cyber's Next Generation

Category

business · technology

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

9 Oct 2025

Latest episode

29 Apr 2026

Latest episodes

18 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   29 Apr 2026

   How to Build a Cybersecurity community of 80000 members? The story of Women4Cyber Foundation

   Europe’s cybersecurity talent gap isn’t just a technical problem. It’s a human capital problem — and one that became dramatically more urgent in 2025, when geopolitical shifts quietly pulled the financial rug out from under the continent’s most active cybersecurity community builder. Anett Mádi-Nátor, President of the Women for Cyber Foundation and Managing Partner at CyEx.hu, joined Scaling Cyber to discuss what it takes to build and sustain an 80,000-member community across 35 countries — and how the foundation navigated its most challenging strategic pivot to date. The Journey: From COVID Startup to European NGO Unicorn Women for Cyber launched in 2019 — just before COVID — with a diverse portfolio of community initiatives. Rather than dictating what the community needed, the team ran what Anett describes as a form of “targeted market research”: launching multiple programs, watching what resonated, and doubling down accordingly. The answer was clear: education, training, and mentorship. Not advocacy. Not events alone. Practical, bottom-up capacity building. Today, Women for Cyber manages 2,500 active mentees through a structured six-month matching program — run by just 1.5 staff members, supported by digital platforms. Fewer than 15 people run the entire foundation. The Market Shift: When US Funding Disappeared Almost Overnight In 2025, a seismic shift hit Women for Cyber’s funding model. With new US political priorities deprioritizing DEI globally, American corporate donations — which had made up 95%+ of W4C’s income — collapsed to below 50% within months. The foundation’s response was not to scale back. It was to restructure. New European corporate partners stepped in. And in doing so, Women for Cyber’s funding crisis became a microcosm of a much larger story: Europe realizing it needs to build its own cybersecurity capacity — independently, urgently, and at scale. “When one door closes, another opens,” Anett notes. “And for Europe, that door is opening now.” Why This Matters Beyond Diversity The conversation reframes the “women in cyber” issue entirely. This isn’t a fairness argument — it’s a strategic one. With cybersecurity talent demand outpacing supply across Europe, excluding 50% of the potential workforce isn’t just inequitable. It’s a security risk. Women for Cyber’s model — inclusive, bottom-up, non-profit — has proven more effective at community building than well-funded institutional programs precisely because it operates without corporate compliance constraints and channels everything back into the mission. Anett also challenges assumptions about where the gender gap actually lives. It’s not primarily in entry-level roles or even founders — it’s in corporate boards and C-suites, where cybersecurity leadership (regardless of gender) is still underrepresented at the highest decision-making levels. What’s Next: Cyber Resilience, AI, and Going Local For 2026, Women for Cyber is pivoting its portfolio toward two new frontiers: cyber resilience (a broader, more operational frame than traditional cybersecurity) and AI-enabled capacity building. The foundation is also leaning harder into local chapter activation — recognizing that physical, local communities are now stronger than purely digital ones in a post-COVID world. The next annual conference will be held in Brussels in September 2026 — a symbolic move to the heart of European institutions. Key Takeaways for Cyber Founders & Leaders * Community-led beats consultant-led. W4C never hired external consultants. Everything came from internal teams and the community — and that’s why it scaled. * The DEI funding shift is a cybersecurity story. The pullback of US support for diversity initiatives has direct, material consequences for European cyber capacity. * The real gap is in boards, not entry-level. For leaders focused on inclusion, the most impactful change happens at the top of established organizations. * Local chapters > central programs. European companies should connect with their national Women for Cyber chapter first — local community building has the highest ROI. * Operational efficiency is a competitive advantage. 2,500 mentees, 1.5 staff. The model is replicable and worth studying. * Cybersecurity is never a one-person show. Anett’s closing line: “It’s always a team effort.” About the Guest Anett Mádi-Nátor is President of the Women for Cyber Foundation, Europe’s largest cybersecurity community with 80,000+ members and 35 national chapters. She is also Managing Partner at CyEx, a CEE-based cybersecurity company. A recognized leader in European cyber policy and capacity building, Anett is driving Women for Cyber’s strategic pivot toward cyber resilience and AI-enabled education for 2026. About Scaling Cyber Europe’s cybersecurity talent gap isn’t just a technical problem. It’s a human capital problem — and one that became dramatically more urgent in 2025, when geopolitical shifts quietly pulled the financial rug out from under the continent’s most active cybersecurity community builder. Anett Mádi-Nátor, President of the Women for Cyber Foundation and Managing Partner at CyEx, joined Scaling Cyber to discuss what it takes to build and sustain an 80,000-member community across 35 countries — and how the foundation navigated its most challenging strategic pivot to date. Subscribe: Substack (https://scalingcyber.substack.com/) | Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/6ya2wXnAocJvzDfGkAjH8t) | Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scaling-cyber/id1840151010) | YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@ScalingCyberPodcast) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit scalingcyber.substack.com (https://scalingcyber.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

2. 

   22 Apr 2026

   The Channel Is King: How Mateusz Wepa Is Building Cybersecurity Distribution from Scratch in Central Europe

   Most cybersecurity founders obsess over their product. Mateusz Wepa obsesses over something else entirely: the channel. And in less than two years, that obsession helped him build IITD’s Polish operation from 5 people to 12, a growing network of dedicated partners, and a reputation for being the most responsive distributor in the market. Guest Journey Mateusz Wepa came up through the world of technology sales and distribution — from his early days at Dagma, where a senior mentor taught him that every email gets answered within two hours, to managing teams across multiple European countries. That discipline — consistency as a form of trust — became the foundation of everything he’d later build at IITD. When IITD decided to enter Poland, they made an unconventional bet: instead of placing one or two business developers to see what happens, they launched with five people from day one — a sales lead, a technical expert, a marketing specialist, and a product manager. The goal was to be fully local, fully committed, and fully capable from the start. The Key Insights Trust is a mathematical equation. Mateusz defines trust simply: consistency over time. Partners don’t need you to be perfect, they need you to be predictable. Pick up the phone. Answer emails. Show up. Do it long enough, and you earn a place in their comfort zone. You don’t need the best product. You need the best channel. He uses his experience with ESET as the example: not the best endpoint product in the world, but the best-distributed one in Poland. The market share follows. Channel excellence consistently beats technology excellence in the mid-market. Identity is the new front line. CrowdStrike’s own data shows that over 80% of attacks use no malware at all. Threat actors don’t hack in, they log in. This is reshaping the conversation around identity protection, Active Directory security, phishing simulation, and AI data exposure. American vendors struggle to let go. Most US vendors have never needed distribution at home. When they try to scale to markets that don’t speak English, they face a paradox: they need to hand over control to a local partner, but struggle to trust one. The ones that figure it out scale. The ones that don’t stall. Why It Matters Poland is the sixth-largest economy in the EU. The Baltics are fast-growing, cyber-aware markets. And Central and Eastern Europe represents a significant untapped opportunity for cybersecurity vendors, if they’re willing to invest properly. IITD’s model — small team, deep expertise, total local commitment — is a blueprint for how to enter these markets the right way. Scaling Lessons * Start with local presence, not remote support. Language, culture, and in-person relationships define trust in CEE markets. * Don’t fall in love with your technology. The market will tell you where the value actually is. * Pick a smaller, committed distributor over a large one that won’t prioritize you. * Identity security is the most pressing emerging category in the Polish market right now. * Consistency — in response times, follow-through, and partner enablement — is your most durable competitive advantage. Key Takeaways for Cyber Founders & Leaders * Channel > Product. A good product with a great channel will outperform a great product with an average channel, every time. * Trust = Consistency over Time. Be predictable. Be responsive. Be there. * Invest in the market, not just in a contract. A distribution agreement is not an investment. MDFs, events, enablement, and local presence, that’s investment. * Don’t assume size equals commitment. A large distributor with 50 products won’t fight for yours. A focused one with 10 will. About the Guest Mateusz Wepa (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mateusz-wepa/) is Country Manager Poland at IITD (https://iit-d.pl/) (Intelligent IT Distribution), a cybersecurity value-added distributor operating in Poland and the Baltics. With a career spanning technology sales, channel management, and multi-country team leadership, he has spent the last two years building one of Poland’s most focused and fastest-growing cybersecurity distribution operations. About Scaling Cyber Scaling Cyber (https://scalingcyber.bridgerwise.com) spotlights cybersecurity founders and ecosystem leaders outside the traditional US/Israel hubs, surfacing the real stories behind building global cyber companies. Subscribe: Substack (https://scalingcyber.substack.com/) | Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/6ya2wXnAocJvzDfGkAjH8t) | Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scaling-cyber/id1840151010) | YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@ScalingCyberPodcast) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit scalingcyber.substack.com (https://scalingcyber.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

3. 

   15 Apr 2026

   SaaS Doesn't Mean Secure. Lukasz Jesis Built Two Companies to Prove It.

   Most companies assume their data is safe because it lives in the cloud. Most engineering teams assume their source code is protected because it’s on GitHub. Most CISOs don’t think about DevOps data until an auditor asks — or until something goes wrong. Lukasz Jesis thought about it before most people did. And it led him to build two of the most focused data protection companies coming out of Europe today. Founder Journey Xopero was founded in 2010 in Gorzów Wielkopolski, Poland — a mid-sized industrial city far from any traditional tech hub. The ambition from day one was to build a Polish product company that sold globally in cybersecurity, at a time when almost no one in Poland was doing it. Lukasz and his team grew Xopero deliberately: targeting the mid-market sweet spot (500–1,000 employees), building a flexible platform that works across hardware appliances, SaaS, and software — all with the same experience. No specialist required to deploy it. The real turning point came from an internal question. What would happen if Xopero lost its own source code? The team said it was “protected somehow.” That answer wasn’t good enough. Digging deeper revealed a gap no one was properly addressing: the backup and security of DevOps ecosystems — GitHub repositories, Azure DevOps pipelines, CI/CD metadata, intellectual property. GitProtect was born. The Key Insights SaaS ≠ Security. Cloud vendors provide services, not data protection guarantees. The shared responsibility model puts full accountability for data recovery on the customer — but most organizations haven’t internalized this. GitProtect exists to close that gap. Category creation requires education. When GitProtect launched, the market didn’t know it needed the product. Early conversations were met with “why would I back up GitHub?” Today, the inbound has flipped: customers arrive already convinced, looking for the best solution — not a reason to buy. Two products, two strategies. Xopero competes in a known market (backup and recovery) against funded giants like Veeam and Acronis — as a disciplined challenger focused on European mid-market. GitProtect creates a niche and leads it globally, with the US as the primary growth market. Both lines are growing at 100%+ year over year. Certifications are GTM accelerators. ISO 27001, SOC 2, and similar attestations are not just compliance exercises. They shorten procurement cycles — especially in the US — and signal that a cybersecurity vendor can be trusted to protect others. Why It Matters Poland’s IT market spends over $50 billion annually. Almost none of it goes to Polish companies. Lukasz calls this “the trap” — a market large enough to seed serious growth, but historically captured almost entirely by US vendors. That’s changing. Digital sovereignty awareness is rising across Europe. And companies like Xopero and GitProtect are proving that innovation in cybersecurity doesn’t require a Silicon Valley zip code or a Tel Aviv address. Scaling Lessons * Define your target group precisely. You cannot build the best product for everyone. Win on the battlefield you define. * Follow your customers, not the full market. Xopero protects 80–90% of critical assets — at the highest possible quality — rather than chasing 100% coverage at lower depth. * Go where your talent leads you. Lukasz’s first international hire for the DACH region was an experienced, hungry leader — someone whose drive matched the company’s pace. * Build culture before scale demands it. At 120 people growing toward 170, the hardest challenge is not product or sales — it’s transmitting core values through layers of new hires. * Governance is the next frontier. Auditors are no longer asking “do you have backups?” They’re asking which data is backed up, how, and who verified it. Key Takeaways for Cyber Founders & Leaders * SaaS services are not data protection. The shared responsibility model places full ownership of data recovery on the customer. * Category creation requires patience. GitProtect spent years educating the market before inbound demand flipped. * Certifications (ISO, SOC 2) are not just compliance — they are competitive advantages in enterprise procurement, especially in the US. * The fastest deals often come after incidents. Be ready to move quickly when a customer has a live problem. * Poland and Central Europe are serious cybersecurity markets — both as talent pools and as emerging ecosystems worth watching. About the Guest Lukasz Jesis (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukasz-jesis/) is Co-Founder and CEO of Xopero (https://xopero.com) Software and GitProtect.io (http://GitProtect.io), headquartered in Gorzów Wielkopolski, Poland. Xopero is a unified backup and disaster recovery platform for mid-market enterprises, and GitProtect is the leading DevOps data protection platform focused on source code, repositories, and the broader engineering ecosystem. About Scaling Cyber Scaling Cyber (https://scalingcyber.bridgerwise.com) spotlights cybersecurity founders and ecosystem leaders outside the traditional US/Israel hubs — surfacing the real stories behind building global cyber companies. Subscribe: Substack (https://scalingcyber.substack.com/) | Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/6ya2wXnAocJvzDfGkAjH8t) | Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scaling-cyber/id1840151010) | YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@ScalingCyberPodcast) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit scalingcyber.substack.com (https://scalingcyber.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

4. 

   8 Apr 2026

   Building Security Operations That Actually Scale: Lessons from Europe's MDR Trenches

   Most security operations centers collapse under their own complexity. They promise to support every vendor, every SIEM, every workflow. They chase features instead of focusing on what actually matters: operational efficiency. Federico Meiners learned this the hard way. After a failed attempt to build a SOC in the United States, he joined Nynox (now ACEN) in Belgium and spent five years discovering what it really takes to build and scale managed detection and response services in Europe’s fragmented market. In this episode of Scaling Cyber, Federico (also known as "Fede") shares the operational playbook behind ASIN’s growth from 5 to more than 50 monitored customers, and why most MDR providers get it completely wrong. From Network Security to Security Operations Federico’s path into security operations wasn’t linear. He started in network security, spending more time troubleshooting VPNs and latency issues than actually doing cybersecurity. His first SOC attempt—setting up operations in the US market—failed despite significant investment in vendors, infrastructure, and marketing. “Setting up a SOC is expensive. You need a lot of foundations to start delivering the service. We invested a lot... and it was really hard to get traction.” That failure became the foundation for everything that came next. The Operational Efficiency Mandate When Federico joined ACEN, he discovered the biggest pitfall of security operations: trying to support everything. The trap most MDR providers fall into: * “Bring your own SIEM” * “We support every vendor” * “Unlimited integrations” * “Custom workflows for every customer” It sounds good in sales calls. It’s impossible to maintain in production. ACEN’s contrarian approach: * Standardize on a specific stack * Choose the 20% that delivers 80% impact * Commit to specific technologies * Pick your market and optimize relentlessly “You really need to pick your market. I mainly work with construction, healthcare, government. They don’t have a SOC, they don’t have a SIEM. So they’re not going to tell me they want their Sentinel integrated. And if they do, I show them the operational efficiency increase on their side when they come to us.” This focus on standardization became ACEN’s scaling engine. Thanks for reading Scaling Cyber! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Automation: From Skepticism to Scale One of the most revealing parts of the conversation is Federico’s automation journey. In 2021-2022, customers started asking: “Federico, why doesn’t your SOC do machine learning? Where’s the automation?” ACEN built their first fully autonomous playbook for Microsoft 365 alerts. The system worked. Less than 1% error rate. Clear visibility into failures. Customer reaction? “I want humans in the process.” “Our generation—people 35 and onwards—we still want to see humans. And to this day, we automate a lot of alerts, and sometimes customers say: I want the human checking this alert.” But the reality is stark: ACEN scaled from 5 to nearly 50 customers because of automation. Federico’s golden metrics for SOC efficiency: * Customer-facing: How many alerts can you handle without contacting the customer? * Internal: How many of those alerts were solved without your analyst? The ratio between these two numbers determines whether a SOC can scale or not. The European Cybersecurity Paradox Federico offers one of the most candid assessments of Europe’s cybersecurity market: “We really like laws. It’s all about compliance and regulations. Sometimes I think Europe wants that to be the competitive advantage against the world. But speak with any MDR vendor in Europe, and 80% of their stack is probably from the United States.” The structural challenges: * Market fragmentation (language, culture, local requirements) * Smaller addressable market per country * Slower sales cycles (3-6 month POCs, 12-month buying processes) * Strong local markets (Germany, France) but limited cross-border scaling * Work-life balance culture vs. startup intensity required for breakthroughs What actually drives SOC adoption in Europe: * Breaches (the strongest driver, despite being fear-based) * Outsourcing (companies separating IT from security vendors) * Curiosity (30% of leads are now genuine interest—a new trend) Compliance matters, but it’s not the primary driver Federico sees in the field. Key Takeaways for Cyber Founders & Leaders On operational efficiency: * Standardization beats flexibility when scaling security operations * Commit to a specific stack and optimize deeply rather than supporting everything superficially * Operational efficiency is your competitive moat, not feature lists On automation: * Automation is the only path to scaling SOC operations * Balance automation with human oversight to maintain customer trust * The golden metric: alerts handled without analyst intervention On detection engineering: * Out-of-the-box rules are making a comeback (detection engineering is expensive) * Focus on the 20% of technologies that cover 80% of your customer base * Patterns emerge when you standardize—use them to your advantage On European scaling: * Market fragmentation is real, but specialization can overcome it * Language and culture matter more in mid-market than enterprise * European founders need to balance work-life culture with the intensity required for breakthroughs On the future: * Abstraction layers will eventually handle most alert workflows * The analyst’s role will shift to ensuring the machine runs properly * Vendors will increasingly embed AI into platforms—choice will disappear About Federico Meiners Federico Meiners is a Security Operations Leader at ACEN (formerly Nynox), where he has spent five years building and scaling managed detection and response services across Belgium and Europe. Originally from Argentina, Federico brings a global perspective to European cybersecurity challenges. About Scaling Cyber Scaling Cyber is a founder-led cybersecurity podcast spotlighting companies and leaders building outside the US and Israel. Hosted by Ignacio Sbampato, the show focuses on real GTM lessons, operational challenges, and global scaling strategies. Subscribe: Substack (https://scalingcyber.substack.com/) | Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/6ya2wXnAocJvzDfGkAjH8t) | Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scaling-cyber/id1840151010) | YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@ScalingCyberPodcast) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit scalingcyber.substack.com (https://scalingcyber.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

5. 

   1 Apr 2026

   American Velocity, European Values: How EclecticIQ Is Redefining Threat Intelligence

   For years, the cybersecurity industry has operated on a false premise: that you must choose between speed and values, between aggressive American scaling and thoughtful European principles. Cody Barrow (https://www.linkedin.com/in/codygbarrow/), CEO of EclecticIQ, is proving that’s wrong. From Intelligence Officer to CEO Cody spent over 20 years in intelligence, half of that in the US federal government. He wasn’t just a practitioner; he was a buyer. He purchased, deployed, and ultimately churned through multiple threat intelligence platforms. When he joined EclecticIQ six and a half years ago, first as VP of Intelligence, then Chief Strategy Officer, and finally as CEO in February 2024, he brought something rare: he had been the customer. That perspective shapes everything — from product roadmap decisions to understanding why prospects ask for specific integrations. When a customer requests a feature, Cody doesn’t have to reverse-engineer their thinking. He already knows the “why” because he lived it. The Market Shift: From Data Hoarding to Decision Enablement For too long, threat intelligence platforms promised one thing and delivered another. Organizations bought CTI tools expecting a system of record. Something that would help them understand who was targeting them and why, so they could prevent incidents. What they got instead was noise: massive data feeds, irrelevant threat actor profiles, and platforms that encouraged “Pokémon-style collection” of indicators without context. Cody calls this out bluntly: “I bought so many TIPs. I churned through them. It hadn’t been done. The original promise of threat intelligence platforms hadn’t been fulfilled.” EclecticIQ’s response? Intelligence Compass, an AI-powered feature that contextualizes threat data based on your actual infrastructure. If you run entirely on Microsoft, you don’t need endless alerts about Linux kernel exploits. Relevance over volume. Insight over collection. This isn’t about adding AI for the sake of AI. It’s about solving the fundamental problem threat intelligence was supposed to solve from the beginning. Why Being European Matters EclecticIQ is fully European-backed and European-owned. That positioning matters more than ever. As digital sovereignty becomes a priority - especially for governments and critical infrastructure - customers increasingly care about jurisdiction, long-term control, and trust. Cody is clear: “We’re not just serving Europeans. We’re serving anyone who thinks about that level of trust.” It’s a positioning that reflects a broader European reawakening: the recognition that Europe needs to move faster, not by copying Silicon Valley’s “move fast and break things” ethos, but by removing obstacles while preserving what makes European companies trustworthy. Scaling Lessons: Talent, Remote Work, and Velocity The European Talent Problem One of the hardest challenges facing European cybersecurity companies is talent: not on the technical side (Europe has world-class engineers), but on the business and domain expertise side. In the US, 50-60% of cybersecurity professionals come from national security backgrounds. They bring discipline, strategic thinking, and deep domain knowledge from day one. In Europe? That pipeline barely exists outside the UK. Cody’s solution: Go fully remote. Today, EclecticIQ’s workforce is roughly 40% Netherlands, 25% UK, 25% India. By removing geographic constraints, they’ve unlocked access to talent pools that would otherwise be unreachable. This is the same playbook being used by other high-velocity European cyber companies like BforeAI (https://open.substack.com/pub/scalingcyber/p/predicting-the-future-how-bforeai?r=ifkfc&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web) and Whalebone (https://open.substack.com/pub/scalingcyber/p/from-czechia-to-1-billion-users-whalebone?r=ifkfc&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web) — and it’s working. American Velocity, European Values Cody flattened EclecticIQ’s hierarchy early, removing management layers that slowed decision-making. But he didn’t adopt the startup grind culture. The team doesn’t work 60-hour weeks unless absolutely necessary. Instead, velocity comes from efficiency: fewer layers, faster decisions, transparent communication, and a deep respect for work-life balance. It’s not Silicon Valley. It’s not Brussels bureaucracy. It’s something new. Key Takeaways for Cyber Founders & Leaders * Domain expertise is a competitive moat. If your team has actually lived the customer’s problems, product decisions become clearer and faster. * Remote-first solves Europe’s talent gap. Don’t limit yourself to your home country when you can access global expertise. * Relevance beats volume. In threat intelligence (and probably in every category), contextual insight is worth more than raw data. * Integrations > all-in-one platforms. Customers want best-of-breed tools that work together, not forced ecosystems. * Positioning matters. Being European isn’t a liability but a trust signal, as long as you combine it with the velocity to compete globally. * Bold voices stand out. European founders who engage with analysts, share strong opinions, and show up consistently (like Cody does) break through the noise. About Cody Barrow Cody Barrow is the CEO of EclecticIQ, a global cyber threat intelligence platform serving governments, critical infrastructure, and the largest enterprises worldwide. With over 20 years in intelligence - including service in the US federal government - Cody brings a unique customer-first perspective to building security products. He’s also a vocal advocate for European cybersecurity sovereignty and building high-velocity teams without sacrificing values. About Scaling Cyber Scaling Cyber is a founder-led cybersecurity podcast highlighting companies and leaders building outside the US and Israel. Hosted by Ignacio Sbampato — former Chief Business Officer at ESET and founder of BridgerWise (https://bridgerwise.com) — the show explores the real challenges of global expansion, category creation, and building in competitive markets. Subscribe: Substack (https://scalingcyber.substack.com/) | Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/6ya2wXnAocJvzDfGkAjH8t) | Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scaling-cyber/id1840151010) | YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@ScalingCyberPodcast) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit scalingcyber.substack.com (https://scalingcyber.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

6. 

   25 Mar 2026

   The CISO's Dilemma: Why Focus Beats Compliance in Building European Cyber Resilience

   For decades, Europe has talked about digital sovereignty and cyber resilience. But talking isn’t building. And according to Petri Kuivala — a veteran CISO who helped secure Nokia, Microsoft, and NXP, and now advises European cybersecurity startups including HoxHunt — the problem isn’t just political. It’s cultural, strategic, and deeply rooted in how European CISOs approach security itself. In this episode of Scaling Cyber, Petri doesn’t hold back. He challenges the regulation-first mindset that dominates European cybersecurity, explains why most CISOs drown in noise instead of focusing on real risk, and lays out exactly what Europe needs to do if it wants to stop being a follower in the digital age. From Corporate CISO to Startup Advisor Petri’s career spans three decades and some of the biggest technology companies in the world. But about 10 years ago, he made a deliberate shift: instead of just defending organizations, he started helping European cybersecurity startups scale. The reason? Simple: “If I stay still, I will become an old fart, and I don’t want to be one.” That shift gave him a unique vantage point. He’s seen what works at enterprise scale. He’s watched 20+ European startups try to grow — some succeeding, most failing. And he’s identified the patterns that separate winners from those that never make it. One of those patterns? Diverse founding teams with honest, challenging conversations about strategy and vision. Solo founders can be Steve Jobs for a while, but very few can sustain that for long. Another? Access to market… and CISOs willing to work with startups. Without that early validation and support, even the best technology stays lonely in its corner. The Brutal Truth About European Cyber Sovereignty Europe loves to talk about cyber sovereignty. But Petri sees a uncomfortable gap between rhetoric and reality: “We are not willing to seek the real European solutions and believe in them. Every time we use a US-based solution, we build competence in some other country or region.” Europe remains industrially focused while the US leads in digital innovation. That structural difference shapes everything—including how CISOs are perceived. In digitally-driven companies, security is central. In industrial companies, it’s often an afterthought. But the bigger issue? European CISOs are afraid to work with European startups. They see vendors as upselling machines, not partners. That distrust kills the innovation pipeline before it even starts. Petri’s call to action is clear: CISOs need to give European startups a seat at the table. Not because they’re European, but because competition drives quality—and Europe won’t build world-class cybersecurity vendors without access to European customers. Focus, Focus, Focus: The One Strategy That Actually Works If there’s one theme that runs through Petri’s entire career, it’s this: Most CISOs are drowning because they’re trying to do everything at once. He’s seen it everywhere: CISOs overwhelmed by alerts, stakeholders pulling them in a hundred directions, and security teams spread so thin they can’t execute on anything meaningful. His solution? Prioritize ruthlessly. Focus on the red corner — the highest-impact, highest-risk area — and stay there until it’s nearly perfect. Then move downstream. “I needed to bring the COO and CTO into the room and have the conversation: which one of you will be the priority? Because I cannot serve both of you at the same time.” That level of clarity is rare. But it’s also what separates effective security leaders from those who burn out trying to please everyone. Process and execution matter more than tools. And the ability to say “no” until you’re ready is a superpower. Crowdsourced Security: The 20% Advantage Most CISOs Ignore One of the most underestimated security capabilities? Your own employees. Petri makes a compelling case: if 60% of a 60,000-person organization actively reports suspicious activity, you can detect intrusion attempts in less than two minutes, with high accuracy. But most CISOs don’t believe it’s possible. They’re technology-driven, not psychology-driven. They underestimate the power of positive reinforcement and gamification. At HoxHunt, Petri has seen this play out firsthand. When you treat security awareness as a behavioral challenge - not a compliance checkbox - people engage. They become an active defense layer. “If you’re capable of taking 20% out of your breach likelihood, that is a huge thing.” It’s not a silver bullet. But it’s a massively underutilized capability sitting right in front of most organizations. Key Takeaways for Cyber Founders & Leaders 🔹 Strategy means saying no. Focus on high-impact areas and stay there until you’ve truly addressed the risk. Spreading thin kills execution. 🔹 Regulation-first security makes you an obstacle, not a partner. Lead with business risk, not compliance checklists. 🔹 Europe won’t build cyber sovereignty by talking about it. CISOs must actively support European startups—not because they’re local, but because competition drives quality. 🔹 Crowdsourced intelligence is a 20% advantage most ignore. Engage employees with positive psychology, and they become your fastest threat detection layer. 🔹 Winning startups have diverse teams with honest, challenging conversations. Solo founders rarely sustain long-term success. 🔹 CISOs can make or break startups. When CISOs open doors for each other, European vendors finally get access to the market they need to scale. About Petri Kuivala Petri Kuivala is a veteran CISO with 30 years of experience defending global organizations including Nokia, Microsoft, and NXP. For the past decade, he has been advising European cybersecurity startups, helping them navigate go-to-market challenges and scale globally. He currently serves as CISO Advisor at HoxHunt, a leading security awareness platform. About Scaling Cyber Scaling Cyber (https://scalingcyber.bridgerwise.com) brings you authentic stories from cybersecurity founders and leaders building global companies outside the US and Israel. Hosted by Ignacio Sbampato—cybersecurity executive, former Chief Business Officer at ESET, and founder of BridgerWise—the show explores tactical growth lessons, strategic insights, and the real challenges of scaling in cybersecurity. Subscribe: Substack (https://scalingcyber.substack.com/) | Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/6ya2wXnAocJvzDfGkAjH8t) | Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scaling-cyber/id1840151010) | YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@ScalingCyberPodcast) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit scalingcyber.substack.com (https://scalingcyber.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

7. 

   18 Mar 2026

   Europe Doesn't Need the US Cybersecurity Playbook. It Needs Its Own.

   Europe imports 70% of the cybersecurity products it uses. That number isn’t just an economic statistic. It’s a strategic vulnerability. And while the debate around digital sovereignty often stays at the policy level, a small group of builders in France is doing something different: writing a new playbook from scratch. In this episode of Scaling Cyber, I sat down with Laurent Hausermann and Aurélie Clerc, co-founders of Cygo Entrepreneurs, a cybersecurity venture studio based in Lyon and Paris, to understand what it actually takes to build European cyber champions in 2026. Who They Are Laurent and Aurélie are not typical investors. They’ve both been founders. They’ve felt the gaps in the European ecosystem firsthand: * the missing middle layer between early-stage startups and global champions, * the fragmented market, * the talent that too often ends up working for Symantec or McAfee rather than building something European. Cygo was born from that frustration. Instead of deploying capital and stepping back, they co-build companies alongside founders: * pairing technical co-founders with commercial co-founders, * validating problems with practitioners before writing a single line of code, * bringing in design partners who become customers. The Key Insights The European market is fragmented and that’s not going away. NIS2 is implemented differently in Germany, Belgium, and Spain. There’s no single 300-million-person market to dominate. Any playbook that ignores this is already broken. The solution isn’t to copy the US, it’s to build for European reality. That means going international from day one (not after funding), building through channel partners and MSSPs rather than direct sales, and leveraging European regulatory complexity as a forcing function for differentiation. Design partners beat POCs. Cygo portfolio companies like Glev and Harven built their first products with design partners: CISOs and security teams who co-built alongside them before the company was even incorporated. No POC theatre. Just real co-creation. “Le Club” is the unfair advantage. Cygo’s private network of CISOs, MSSPs, system integrators, and VCs gives founders immediate access to the practitioners they need. Not after fundraising, but from day one. Why It Matters Europe has the talent. It has the regulatory momentum. What it’s been missing is a structured model for converting all of that into companies that actually scale. Cygo is one of the first attempts to build that infrastructure deliberately, and the early signals are positive. Scaling Lessons * Start with the market, not the technology. Validate pain before building product. * Pair technical and commercial talent from the very beginning. * Go European from day one. Not French, not German. European. * Use indirect channels (MSSPs, system integrators) as your GTM engine, not an afterthought. * Leverage AI — especially open-source and fine-tuned models — to scale security practices, not just to build security products. Key Takeaways for Cyber Founders & Leaders * Europe’s fragmentation is a challenge AND an opportunity if you design for it from the start. * The design partner model eliminates the POC problem. Build with customers, not for them. * Community is infrastructure. A CISO network isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s a GTM asset. * “Made in Europe” can mean technical excellence, not just geopolitical preference. * It’s never too late. The next wave of European cyber champions is being built right now. About the Guests Laurent Hausermann and Aurélie Clerc are co-founders of Cygo Entrepreneurs, a cybersecurity venture studio based in France. Laurent is a serial entrepreneur and one of Europe’s most vocal advocates for building a sovereign cybersecurity ecosystem. Aurélie brings deep expertise in market validation and founder support. Together, they lead a portfolio of companies co-built with “Le Club”, their private network of CISOs, MSSPs, and security practitioners. 🎙️ About Scaling Cyber Scaling Cyber spotlights cybersecurity founders and ecosystem leaders outside the traditional US/Israel hubs — surfacing the real stories behind building global cyber companies. If you’re a founder, investor, CISO, or partner looking beyond the obvious markets — this is your front-row seat. Subscribe: Substack (https://scalingcyber.substack.com/) | Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/6ya2wXnAocJvzDfGkAjH8t) | Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scaling-cyber/id1840151010) | YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@ScalingCyberPodcast) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit scalingcyber.substack.com (https://scalingcyber.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

8. 

   11 Mar 2026

   The Data Doesn’t Lie: Why Europe Has Cyber Talent But Not Enough Global Leaders

   The cybersecurity industry is often framed as a US and Israel story. Silicon Valley drives category creation.Tel Aviv drives elite technical innovation.Europe? Fragmented, underfunded, slower to scale. But what does the actual data say? In this opening episode of Season 2 of Scaling Cyber, we sat down with Richard Stiennon, Founder of IT-Harvest — one of the most comprehensive cybersecurity market research firms in the world — to separate perception from reality. And the reality is more nuanced. Founder & Analyst Journey Richard has spent decades tracking cybersecurity vendors globally. IT-Harvest maintains a continuously updated database of thousands of cybersecurity companies, including those that were acquired, shut down, or disappeared quietly. Unlike narrative-driven industry commentary, this dataset provides a structural view of the ecosystem: • Vendor density by region• Category saturation• Acquisition velocity• Growth patterns• Funding disparities It’s one of the few places where the entire cybersecurity market can be examined objectively. The Market Shift: Europe vs US vs Israel Here’s what the data shows: * The US still produces the highest number of new vendors annually. * Israel continues to punch above its weight because its companies must sell globally from day one. * Europe has large vendor density in countries like Germany, France, and the UK, yet fewer breakout category leaders. Why? Structure. US companies benefit from: * Deep, risk-tolerant venture capital * A unified large domestic market * Established M&A pipelines * Immediate analyst and media visibility Israel benefits from: * Military-driven talent pipelines * Export-first mindset * Tight founder-investor networks * Aggressive global ambition Europe, by contrast: * Is fragmented by language and regulation * Has smaller, more conservative funding rounds * Often builds product depth before category clarity * Tends to underinvest in positioning and analyst relations The result? Strong technology. Slower global category dominance. Why It Matters This isn’t just about national pride. It affects: • Investor returns• Founder ambition• Market consolidation• Buyer awareness• Ecosystem maturity If Europe wants more category leaders, it must align capital, ambition, positioning, and ecosystem support. Scaling Lessons A few powerful insights from the conversation: * Visibility is strategic, not optional. * Analysts are not gatekeepers — they are amplifiers. * Platform narratives often repeat historical mistakes. * Venture capital scale influences global velocity. * AI will reshape the vendor landscape faster than most expect. Richard’s strongest warning? AI-driven transformation will fundamentally alter cybersecurity within 12 months, and exponentially beyond that. Founders who ignore this shift risk irrelevance. Key Takeaways for Cyber Founders & Leaders * Focus your category before expanding into adjacent products. * Understand who your buyer actually is — and who they are not. * Don’t assume technology alone will drive adoption. * Engage analysts early to shape perception. * Study structural advantages — and compensate strategically. * If you’re building in Europe, think globally from day one. About the Guest Richard Stiennon (https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiennon/) is Founder & Chief Research Analyst at IT-Harvest (https://it-harvest.com/), maintaining one of the most comprehensive global cybersecurity vendor databases. He is also author of Up and to the Right, a leading guide to analyst relations in cybersecurity. 🎙️ About Scaling Cyber Scaling Cyber spotlights cybersecurity founders and ecosystem leaders outside the traditional US/Israel hubs — surfacing the real stories behind building global cyber companies. If you’re a founder, investor, CISO, or partner looking beyond the obvious markets — this is your front-row seat. Subscribe: Substack (https://scalingcyber.substack.com/) | Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/6ya2wXnAocJvzDfGkAjH8t) | Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scaling-cyber/id1840151010) | YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@ScalingCyberPodcast) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit scalingcyber.substack.com (https://scalingcyber.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

9. 

   4 Mar 2026

   The System Behind Global Cyber Success

   Season 1 of Scaling Cyber showcased ambitious cybersecurity founders building outside the traditional US and Israel hubs. Season 2 asks a harder question: Why do some regions consistently produce global cybersecurity leaders while others struggle to scale beyond their borders? This season moves beyond individual stories and into structural reality. From Founder Stories to System Thinking The first season proved something important: Cyber innovation is global. But innovation alone does not create global market leaders. Season 2 shifts the lens toward: * Capital formation * Buyer dynamics * Distribution leverage * Talent pipelines * Policy influence * Operational execution Because scaling is not accidental. It’s structural. The Market Diagnosis We begin with hard data on the global cybersecurity vendor landscape. Who dominates?Why?What patterns repeat? Then we challenge assumptions about how European cybersecurity companies are built, and where structural friction slows them down. This season follows a deliberate arc: Market Reality → Structural Diagnosis → Buyer Perspective → Operators → Founders → Channel → Ecosystem Future It is a journey from symptoms to system. Why This Matters Now Cybersecurity has never been more strategic. * Sovereignty. * AI acceleration. * Geopolitical fragmentation. * Capital discipline. Regions that understand how to align ecosystem power will define the next decade of global cybersecurity leadership. Founders cannot scale alone. Ecosystems either amplify you… or limit you. Scaling Lessons Ahead Season 2 brings: * CISOs sharing how they actually evaluate vendors * Founders scaling globally from Europe * Distribution leaders shaping market access * Ecosystem builders tackling the talent gap * Data-driven perspectives on structural competitiveness The focus is clear: Execution > NarrativeStructure > HypeSystems > Individuals Key Takeaways for Cyber Founders & Leaders * Innovation is necessary but ecosystem alignment determines scale * Buyers define reality, not founders * Channel and capital are leverage multipliers * Talent strategy is long-term competitive advantage * Structural awareness separates local players from global leaders About Ignacio Sbampato Ignacio Sbampato (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ignaciosbampato/) is a cybersecurity executive, former Chief Business Officer at ESET, and founder of BridgerWise (https://bridgerwise.com). With more than two decades building global markets, he now focuses on helping cybersecurity startups scale beyond their borders. About Scaling Cyber Scaling Cyber is a founder-led cybersecurity podcast highlighting global challengers and the systems behind their success. If you believe the next generation of cyber leaders is already here — but underrepresented — this show is for you. Subscribe: Substack (https://scalingcyber.substack.com/) | Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/6ya2wXnAocJvzDfGkAjH8t) | Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scaling-cyber/id1840151010) | YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@ScalingCyberPodcast) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit scalingcyber.substack.com (https://scalingcyber.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

10. 

    18 Dec 2025

    Cleaning the “Dirty Dishes” of Cybersecurity: How Sendmarc Scaled a Global Company from South Africa

    Email impersonation isn’t as flashy as other threat vectors.And yet, it’s one of the most abused attack vectors in the world. In this episode of Scaling Cyber, I sat down with Sacha Matulovich, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Sendmarc, to unpack how a company born in South Africa built a global business around one of cybersecurity’s most overlooked — and most critical — problems: email domain impersonation and DMARC compliance. This conversation isn’t just about email security.It’s about distribution, go-to-market discipline, and what it really takes to scale a cybersecurity company from outside the usual power hubs. 🎧 Listen to the full conversation on Scaling Cyber: 👉 YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@ScalingCyberPodcast) | Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/6ya2wXnAocJvzDfGkAjH8t) | Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scaling-cyber/id1840151010) From Email Marketing to Cyber Defense Sendmarc didn’t start as a “cybersecurity idea” in the traditional sense. Its founders came from the email marketing world, where delivering billions of legitimate emails forces you to deeply understand how email infrastructure actually works. That background created a unique perspective: If you truly understand how email is delivered, you also understand how it’s abused. When Sacha’s co-founders discovered DMARC — the global standard that prevents email domain spoofing — they saw both a security gap and a market gap. The problem?DMARC is powerful, but painfully complex. “The world doesn’t need to understand all the acronyms,” Sacha explains.“They just need their domain to not be weaponized.” That insight became Sendmarc’s core strategy:Do the dirty dishes so customers don’t have to. Building from South Africa Unlike many startups, Sendmarc didn’t begin with a grand vision of global domination. They started local: * Talking to customers they could meet face-to-face * Selling on day two * Getting immediate feedback on value, pricing, and pain Only later did reality hit:This wasn’t a regional problem. Within the first year, Sendmarc had customers in more than 10 countries. “Whether we liked it or not, we had built a global business.” South Africa, often seen as a disadvantage, became an unexpected strength: * Founders used to solving hard problems * Limited local market forcing early efficiency * A global diaspora that helped open doors abroad Education Before Enforcement Sendmarc entered the market before DMARC became mandatory. That meant years of: * Explaining why the problem existed * Proving that impersonation was real * Convincing buyers before Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo forced compliance One early GTM trick?They demonstrated the attack. “If I can send an email pretending to be you — and it lands — the value becomes obvious immediately.” Later, when big tech enforced DMARC, the conversation shifted:From education to execution. And Sendmarc was ready. Distribution as a Strategy One of the most valuable parts of this conversation is Sendmarc’s channel journey. They didn’t chase every route at once. They layered it deliberately: * Direct sales to validate value and pricing * MSPs and resellers to scale reach * Distributors — once GTM maturity existed * OEM partnerships for massive distribution leverage Crucially, Sendmarc made a hard decision early:They would be partner-first, even if it meant giving up margin. “We chose trust over short-term revenue.” That clarity allowed partners to invest confidently — and helped Sendmarc scale without building a massive direct sales force for a relatively low-ACV product. Why Some Distributors Work — and Others Don’t Sacha is refreshingly honest about distribution: * Big distributors aren’t always the answer * If you don’t matter to their revenue, you don’t matter at all * Commitment must go both ways One of Sendmarc’s most successful partnerships started with a simple rule:Skin in the game on both sides. A funded head.A minimum commitment.Shared accountability. The result?Focus, execution, and growth. DMARC as a GTM Superpower DMARC has a unique property most cybersecurity sectors don’t:Everything is visible in DNS. That means Sendmarc (and its partners) can: * See which domains are vulnerable * Know which competitors are in place * Track failures and history over time This turns security telemetry into a go-to-market engine. Instead of cold outreach: “We can see your problem… and we can fix it.” For Sendmarc, DMARC isn’t just a security control.It’s a sales accelerator. OEM Partnerships and Earning a Seat at the Table Landing OEM partnerships with global vendors — including Sophos — didn’t happen overnight. Sacha’s explanation is simple, and brutally honest: * They worked harder than competitors * They were flexible * They over-delivered * They showed up in person “What we lacked in brand, we made up for in effort.” In cybersecurity, trust still happens face-to-face.Flights, conferences, awkward first meetings — all part of the cost of scale. Focus Over Expansion Despite growth, Sendmarc has resisted the temptation to become “everything email security.” Their strategy is clear: * Be the best in anti-email impersonation * Expand carefully into adjacent problems * Solve distribution, not just technology As Sacha puts it: “DMARC isn’t a technology problem anymore. It’s a distribution problem.” The Real Lesson: Get Out of Your Comfort Zone One of the most human moments in the episode comes when Sacha describes attending his first cyber conference in London. No friends.No recognition.No shortcuts. “It felt like standing alone at a bar, hoping someone would talk to you.” Years later, those same conferences feel very different. The lesson?Community matters.Relationships compound.And growth is uncomfortable — until it isn’t. Final Takeaways for Cyber Founders * Not all important problems are sexy but they can be massive * Distribution is a strategy, not a checkbox * Partner trust beats short-term margin * Being early means educating; being ready means executing * If you’re building outside the big hubs, effort is your unfair advantage Thanks for reading Scaling Cyber! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. 🎙️ About the Episode This conversation is part of Season 1 of Scaling Cyber — the show where founders and leaders from outside the US and Israel share how they’re building global cybersecurity companies. Host: Ignacio Sbampato (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ignaciosbampato/) — cybersecurity executive, former Chief Business Officer at ESET, and founder of BridgerWise (https://bridgerwise.com/). Guest: (https://www.linkedin.com/in/luigilenguito/)Sacha Matulovich, CEO & Co-Founder of BforeAI. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit scalingcyber.substack.com (https://scalingcyber.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

11. 

    11 Dec 2025

    Seeing the Cloud Clearly: How Mitigant Is Exposing the Blind Spots That Keep Companies at Risk

    The cloud promised speed, scale, and efficiency. What it didn’t promise — but absolutely delivered — is complexity. And inside that complexity hide the blind spots that attackers love more than anything else. Most companies think they’re secure. They have a CSPM. They have a CNAPP. They follow compliance. Their dashboards are green. And yet, they still get hacked. In this episode of Scaling Cyber, we sat down with Kennedy Torkura and Nils Karn from Mitigant, a Berlin-based startup built around a simple, uncomfortable truth: Security tools often overestimate how safe you really are. Mitigant exists to validate whether they’re actually working. 🎧 Listen to the full conversation on Scaling Cyber: YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@ScalingCyberPodcast) | Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/6ya2wXnAocJvzDfGkAjH8t) | Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scaling-cyber/id1840151010) From Academia to Builders: How Mitigant Was Born Mitigant wasn’t born in a boardroom. It started inside the Hasso Plattner Institute, one of Germany’s most respected engineering and tech research centers. Kennedy and his co-founders spent years researching security chaos engineering, cloud risk modeling, and adversarial testing. Nils approached the space through a different lens: understanding how sensitive data, especially in education systems, required real-proof security, not assumptions. When they compared their findings with what real companies were doing, the gap was striking: What companies should be doing in the cloud versus what they actually do was nowhere close. That gap became their mission. Why the Cloud Is Full of Blind Spots Cloud security today is dominated by CSPMs and CNAPPs. Powerful tools, but limited by their perspective. They analyze configurations. They enforce policies. They show you a static picture. What they don’t do is test whether their findings hold up in reality. As Kennedy put it: “Defenders remain biased by their own systems. Attackers aren’t. Their job is to find the gaps — the things you never thought about.” Mitigant flips the model: Instead of asking “Are we compliant?” They ask: “If an attacker tried today, would they succeed?” This shift in mindset — from defensive to adversarial — is what they call Cloud Attack Emulation, a category they had to create because nothing in the market truly fit what they were doing. Continuous Cloud Attack Emulation: More Than BAS, More Than CNAPP Mitigant performs continuous, automated attack scenarios inside your cloud or Kubernetes environment. Safely and in controlled conditions. It’s not BAS. It’s not CSPM. It’s not red teaming. It’s the glue between them, validating all of them. Think of it as the missing half of your cloud security program: * CSPM tells you what looks wrong. * Mitigant tells you if attackers can actually exploit it. * CNAPP shows potential attack paths. * Mitigant tests if those paths are real and whether detection works. * Your SOC thinks alerts are configured correctly. * Mitigant proves whether the alert actually fires. The term the founders love is “assumed breach mentality.” Nils described it well: “German companies especially think: ‘We have processes, we have guardrails, nothing can go wrong.’ And then you run our tests… and four or five attacks still make it through.” Why European Enterprises Take So Long to Try New Security Tech This episode also highlights a huge difference between the US and Europe. In the US: Companies buy the vision, try it fast, measure, and move on. In Europe: Companies want proof: upfront, extensive, and from multiple stakeholders. Mitigant learned this early. They didn’t want to run POCs at first, but it became unavoidable. A German company buying a new security tool usually means: * 3–6 month POC * 12 months buying process * Multiple internal stakeholders * A long chain of technical validation As Nils put it bluntly: “German companies invest billions into cybersecurity — but almost zero into cybersecurity startups.” Yet Mitigant found its momentum anyway. Scaling From Berlin: Japan, the Gulf, and What Comes Next One of the most surprising decisions in Mitigant’s growth has been their choice of expansion markets. Instead of jumping straight to the US, they went to: * Japan, partnering with Future Spirits * The Gulf region, especially around emerging AI security initiatives Why Japan? Quality. Detail. Service-oriented thinking. It mirrors German engineering culture. Why the Gulf? A race to build the world’s fastest AI-driven digital economies — with massive investments in cloud, new datacenters, and AI safety. Mitigant’s continuous validation fits perfectly into both worlds. AI Attack Emulation: The Next Frontier Perhaps the most exciting part: Mitigant is now applying its methodology to AI systems. As companies deploy LLMs, fine-tune models, or adopt managed AI services like Amazon Bedrock, new vulnerabilities emerge: * Data poisoning * Prompt manipulation * Unauthorized model access * Data exfiltration through AI workflows Most AI security tools claim full visibility. But as Kennedy explains, the gap between marketing claims and technical reality is… big. Mitigant is injecting adversarial tests directly into AI pipelines — bringing “assumed breach” into the world of machine learning. What Success Looks Like for Mitigant The next year is all about: * Growing their enterprise customer base * Solidifying their category * Deepening AI security capabilities * Strengthening partnerships (MSPs, global integrators, cloud-native consultancies) * And getting Series A ready Their biggest technical ambition? Building an offensive security IDE: a platform where companies can craft their own cloud or AI attack scenarios with ease. Democratized red teaming, continuous validation, real-world resilience. Key Takeaways for Cyber Founders & Leaders 1. Tools don’t guarantee security — validation does. Dashboards lie. Adversaries don’t. 2. Blind spots grow in complexity. Cloud, Kubernetes, microservices, and AI multiply attack surfaces. 3. Europe’s GTM path is longer — but not impossible. Mitigant is proving cyber companies can scale from the DACH region. 4. Assumed breach is not a slogan — it’s a mindset shift. Real security leaders think like attackers, not auditors. 5. AI security will be the next great frontier. And the winners will be those who treat AI like a dynamic system, not a static asset. About the Episode This interview is part of Season 1 of Scaling Cyber (https://scalingcyber.bridgerwise.com) — the show spotlighting cybersecurity founders and innovators outside the US and Israel, where global growth stories often go untold. Host: Ignacio Sbampato (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ignaciosbampato/) — cybersecurity executive and founder of BridgerWise (https://bridgerwise.com) Guests: Kennedy Torkura (https://www.linkedin.com/in/aondona/) & Nils Karn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/nils-karn/) — Co-Founders of Mitigant (https://mitigant.io) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit scalingcyber.substack.com (https://scalingcyber.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

12. 

    4 Dec 2025

    Reinventing Human Risk: How OutKept Built the World’s First Ethical Phishing Community

    When organizations talk about cybersecurity, they usually talk about the tools: EDR, SIEM, AI detection, automation.But behind nearly every breach, one constant remains: people still click. For decades, the industry has tried to fix that with templated phishing simulations that are often outdated, unrealistic, and far removed from the real attacks employees receive daily. But what if cyber security awareness could finally match reality? That’s the thinking behind OutKept, the Belgian startup reinventing human risk management through a global community of ethical phishers: people competing to create the most effective, local, and credible phishing emails possible. In this episode of Scaling Cyber, Simon Bauwens shares the journey behind this unconventional approach, the impact of hyper-local content, and why community + incentives may be the missing piece in cybersecurity awareness. 🎧 Listen to the full conversation on Scaling Cyber: YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@ScalingCyberPodcast) | Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/6ya2wXnAocJvzDfGkAjH8t) | Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scaling-cyber/id1840151010) The Problem No One Talks About: “Bad Awareness Creates Bad Reflexes” Simon puts it simply: “If you do phishing simulations poorly, you’re actually making people worse at spotting attacks.” Most platforms rely on generic templates: * outdated brands * broken language * AI-translated content * little connection to local culture * scenarios attackers stopped using years ago Employees learn to spot these emails, not the ones that actually hit their inbox. OutKept’s answer?👉 Create a system where phishing emails evolve as fast as attackers do. Not through algorithms.Not through templates.But through a community of humans competing — and getting paid — to craft the most credible phishing campaigns possible. Inside the Ethical Phishing Community The idea sounds bold because it is. Inspired by bug bounty logic, OutKept built a marketplace where: * ethical “phishers” submit phishing emails * emails are ranked by real-world success * high-performing ones get paid more * the best content survives, like natural selection Local specificity is the superpower.Phishers create content tied to regional storms, elections, strikes, banks, slang, holidays, and all the cultural nuance attackers exploit. The result is training that looks dangerously real because it’s created by the same kind of minds who would write real phishing campaigns, just operating ethically. Europe’s Linguistic Chaos: A Hidden Advantage One of the biggest complaints about phishing platforms?Language quality. In Europe alone: * Belgium has three official languages * Flemish ≠ Dutch (Netherlands) * Walloon French ≠ France French * Baltic languages have tiny populations * AI still misses regional nuance and tone Big vendors don’t prioritize small languages.Communities do. That’s why OutKept’s model resonates from Poland to Spain to the Baltics — markets where cyber vendors often deliver poor localized training. Sometimes, being born in fragmented Europe is actually an advantage.It forces you to build global-first from the start. Building a Cyber Startup in Belgium’s Rising Tech Ecosystem Simon didn’t start in cybersecurity.His background spans sociology, automation, and consulting.He wanted a product, a co-founder, and a big problem to solve. COVID brought him together with Dieter, who had a cybersecurity background.Their brainstorming sessions blended ideas on community, automation, and human behavior, eventually converging into what became OutKept. Belgium wasn’t the reason they started in cyber, but being in Ghent helped them grow.A vibrant tech ecosystem, increasing attention to cybersecurity, and proximity to European markets made expansion easier. Today, OutKept already delivers simulations in 86 countries — proof that European cyber companies can scale far beyond their borders. Competing in a Red-Ocean Market Human risk is one of the noisiest cybersecurity categories.Huge incumbents.Aggressive competitors.Crowded feature sets. Simon learned quickly: * competitors get hostile when they feel threatened * legal letters and targeted ads are part of the game * “thicker skin” is a necessary founder trait * but collaboration still exists — and matters At industry events, founders take selfies and share insights.Behind closed doors, they battle for market share. OutKept’s differentiation — community, gamification, local realism — gives them a unique angle in a market crowded with commoditized products. AI vs Human Creativity: What Happens Next? Everyone in cybersecurity is asking the same question:Will AI disrupt awareness training? Simon’s view is pragmatic: * Real attackers already use AI. * So do OutKept’s phishers. * AI can generate content, but not context. * The future belongs to humans using AI as a tool, not the other way around. Instead of building one “AI phishing engine,” OutKept enables hundreds of people to use AI creatively, competing to outsmart each other. Community beats templates — and may beat pure AI too. Scaling OutKept Across Europe (and Beyond) OutKept is expanding thoughtfully: * Partners in Belgium and Poland (including a distributor assigning dedicated account managers) * Early traction in Spain * Growing interest across the Baltics, Central Europe, and Ukraine * Preparing to cover more of Southern Europe & the Netherlands Their strategy is clear:Awareness alone rarely works as a standalone tool.Strong channel partners integrate OutKept into a broader security service offering — combining local relationships with OutKept’s global platform. Advice to Other Cyber Founders Simon’s message to other founders is one that many overlook: “Get out of your office. Go to events.The conversations give you energy and the best market intelligence.” When the bank account looks scary…When competitors send legal threats…When a deal is lost at the last minute… Meeting real people who believe in what you’re building gives you the momentum to keep going. That psychological fuel often matters more than strategy frameworks or pitch decks. The Opportunity Europe Shouldn’t Miss Europe loves regulations — sometimes too much.But Simon sees a silver lining: * NIS2 is pushing organizations toward real cybersecurity maturity * Regulation creates opportunity for startups that can help companies comply * Just like GDPR became a global benchmark, NIS2 may shape global awareness standards The challenge?Europe regulates faster than it innovates and invests.To truly compete with the US and China, it needs both. About the Episode This conversation is part of Season 1 of Scaling Cyber — the show spotlighting founders and leaders building cybersecurity companies outside the US/Israel bubble. Host: Ignacio Sbampato (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ignaciosbampato/) — cybersecurity executive, former Chief Business Officer at ESET, and founder of BridgerWise (https://bridgerwise.com/).Guest: Simon Bauwens (https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonbauwens/), CEO & Co-Founder of OutKept (https://www.outkept.com). This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit scalingcyber.substack.com (https://scalingcyber.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

13. 

    27 Nov 2025

    From Czechia to 1 Billion Users: How Whalebone Turned Telcos Into a Cybersecurity Powerhouse

    Most cybersecurity companies build for enterprises. Some build for governments. Very few build for telcos — and even fewer manage to transform telco networks into massive cybersecurity distribution engines. Whalebone did exactly that. Founded in Brno almost a decade ago, Whalebone spent years growing steadily — 100% YoY, every year, for nine years straight — before hitting a global inflection point. Today, the company is on track to reach a milestone that only a handful of cybersecurity players have ever touched: 👉 Protecting one billion people through network-level security. In this episode of Scaling Cyber, Richard Malovic shares how a mix of “productive naivety,” relentless ambition, and obsessive customer listening turned Whalebone into one of Europe’s most globally scaled cybersecurity vendors. 🎧 Listen to the full conversation on Scaling Cyber: YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@ScalingCyberPodcast) | Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/6ya2wXnAocJvzDfGkAjH8t) | Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scaling-cyber/id1840151010) The Origin Story: When Not Knowing the Rules Becomes an Advantage Richard is the first to admit something unusual: He entered cybersecurity without a cybersecurity background.His co-founder, Robert, brought the technical expertise, but Richard came from an entirely different world — steam and gas turbines at Siemens, selling machinery across continents. That outsider mindset became a superpower. Where many cyber founders look at industry norms as constraints, Richard simply didn’t know those constraints existed — and therefore ignored them. “I didn’t know the traditional schemes. I didn’t ask too much around.That naivety was the key.” Instead of following industry playbooks, Whalebone followed its customers. The Telco Pivot That Changed Everything Whalebone started by offering threat intelligence. They could have stayed there — consulting, selling data, or building a firewall or endpoint product. But conversations changed the trajectory. Small ISPs told them:👉 “Take your threat intelligence and filter my DNS traffic.”Large telcos like Telefónica and América Móvil told them:👉 “Your technology could power security for every SIM card and every household.” That feedback sparked the model Whalebone is famous for today: DNS-level protection delivered through telcos — not as cost, but as a revenue-generating service. This shift also transformed their business model from licenses into consumption-based economics, perfectly aligned with how telcos operate. Few cybersecurity companies have ever achieved this level of integration and adoption in telco infrastructure. Scaling to 1 Billion: The Vision Becoming a Mission Whalebone’s core idea is simple but audacious: Protect everyone connected to a network — without installing anything. Because the protection sits at the DNS and network layer, Whalebone can shield: * Consumers * Small businesses * Enterprises * Government users * Entire populations Richard reveals that within months, Whalebone’s customer telcos will collectively serve 1 billion people — meaning the infrastructure will be in place to protect them all. Not all will be activated on day one. Penetration happens progressively.But the vision has officially transitioned into an execution mission. Why Growing Up in Czechia Helped — But Not How You Think Czechia is known for cybersecurity successes — AVG, Avast, ESET (where Ignacio built a major part of his career). But Richard doesn’t attribute Whalebone’s growth to that legacy. He attributes it to ambition and confidence. Technical founders in Europe often self-limit, he says, but US and Israeli founders don’t — and neither did Whalebone. “Positive examples are the most important.Europe needs ambition and confidence more than anything else.” Being from Czechia helped in one meaningful way:Brno has a long tradition of international trade, and Richard simply treated cybersecurity the way he treated turbines — no borders, no hesitation, no fear. “We’re Not Selling Cybersecurity — We’re Selling Business” One of Whalebone’s biggest differentiators is their high-touch engagement with telcos. Telcos asked thousands of questions. Whalebone answered — then answered better by building a robust customer success engine dedicated to helping telcos expand user adoption. This is rare in cybersecurity. Many vendors stop at product delivery. Whalebone goes further:✔ Helps telcos increase penetration✔ Provides commercialization playbooks✔ Aligns around new revenue streams✔ Builds long-term partnerships instead of transactions Product excellence + service excellence = the winning formula. DNS4EU: A European Project with Business DNA The EU’s DNS4EU initiative is one of the most ambitious public cybersecurity efforts in recent years. But Whalebone didn’t join because of public funding. They joined because — uniquely — economic viability was a requirement.The program was structured as a Public-Private Partnership where profitability mattered as much as protection. For Richard, this turned a public project into a business challenge worth tackling. Going Global Early — And What Happens at 150 Employees Whalebone has people across Latin America, India, Lithuania, Spain, Latvia, and more. Richard makes it sound deceptively simple: “It’s not that difficult. People are just in another place.” But the real challenge wasn’t global reach — it was the transition from 80 to 150 people. Communication complexity increases.Alignment becomes harder.More people doesn’t always mean more output. Richard describes it as walking through a snowy valley with normal boots — you know you’ll reach the other side, but it takes effort. This phase is where many European cyber companies stall.Whalebone is pushing through. What’s Next: New Protection Layers & a Global Distribution Engine Whalebone will continue to add layers of protection that don’t depend on installing software — identity protection, network-centric security, and more. But the bigger opportunity? Leaning into what Richard calls their “go-to-market omnipresence.” In other words: 👉 A global sales machine capable of absorbing and scaling additional cybersecurity technologies. This echoes the Palo Alto Networks model — leveraging GTM strength as a multiplier for product expansion. Few European companies have ever attempted it.Whalebone wants to be one of them. The Founder Mindset: Focus on the Next Match When asked about future milestones, Richard shares a story: A few weeks ago, he celebrated a personal milestone — reducing his direct reports down to five. For a founder who once had 15–20 people reporting to him, it was a sign of a maturing organization. But for what comes next? “I’m focused on the next match.One match after another — and hopefully at the end of the season, there will be success.” This grounded approach is what keeps Whalebone moving fast without losing direction. About the Episode This conversation is part of Season 1 of Scaling Cyber — the show where founders and leaders from outside the US and Israel share how they’re building global cybersecurity companies. Host: Ignacio Sbampato (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ignaciosbampato/) — cybersecurity executive, former Chief Business Officer at ESET, and founder of BridgerWise (https://bridgerwise.com/).Guest: Richard Malovic (https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardmalovic/), CEO & Co-Founder of Whalebone (https://whalebone.io/). This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit scalingcyber.substack.com (https://scalingcyber.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

14. 

    20 Nov 2025

    Autonomous Threat Hunting: How TandemTrace Is Rewriting the SecOps Playbook

    For more than a decade, SecOps teams have been overwhelmed by alerts, data gaps, fragmented tooling, and the limits of human capacity. Even the most advanced SOCs still operate with a simple truth: humans can’t investigate everything — and many threats never trigger an alert at all. But what if that limitation disappeared? In this episode of Scaling Cyber, Almog Ohayon shares how TandemTrace is pioneering autonomous threat hunting — not automation, not copilots, but AI agents fully capable of investigating, hypothesizing, correlating, and validating threats 24/7. This isn’t a future promise.Almog and his team are already shipping it. 🎧 Listen to the full conversation on Scaling Cyber: YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@ScalingCyberPodcast) | Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/6ya2wXnAocJvzDfGkAjH8t) | Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scaling-cyber/id1840151010) From Co-Pilot to Pilot: A Paradigm Shift in SecOps When Almog co-founded Javelin Networks in 2014, cloud adoption was still debated and SaaS was barely a known concept. A decade later, he sees the same trust gap repeating — but this time with AI. Yet the difference is profound:Today, AI can outperform humans in many SecOps workflows, especially alert triage and threat hunting. Almog describes a fundamental mindset shift in his journey building TandemTrace: * Early on, he thought AI would “assist” analysts. * Two years later, he believes AI agents will lead — and analysts will supervise. This shift isn’t just philosophical.It changes how products should be designed, how telemetry is ingested, how hypotheses are generated, and how investigations scale. What Makes TandemTrace Different While many vendors claim to offer “AI SOC” solutions, Almog explains that most still operate as glorified copilots or alert-enhancers. TandemTrace, instead, focuses on: 1. Autonomous Threat Hunting Agents build hypotheses on their own. They correlate threat intel with environment context. They re-analyze events without waiting for alerts. And they operate 24/7 without human fatigue. The result:Every alert gets investigated — and so does everything that didn’t generate an alert. 2. Intelligent Telemetry Slicing Instead of ingesting full data streams (too expensive for LLMs), TandemTrace slices only what’s relevant: * 10 seconds from this host * 20 seconds from that process * Targeted correlations across sources This precision turns overwhelming logs into actionable micro-snapshots. 3. Blind Spot Detection The platform doesn’t just run agents — it tells you what visibility you’re missing and how that impacts false positives, threat coverage, and confidence. For analysts, this is gold. 4. On-Prem Ready from Day One Particularly critical in Europe, where data sovereignty is a blocker.Almog built for on-prem early after customer feedback — something most AI SOC vendors still haven’t addressed. A Founder Who Builds Fast, Very Fast Almog’s speed comes from a combination of: * Domain expertise from Javelin Networks * A willingness to pivot * The use of Claude code and AI agents to accelerate development * A product mindset shaped by real customer feedback As he says: “What used to take 50 developers can now be done by 5.” For early-stage founders, this episode is a masterclass in building quickly, listening deeply, and iterating relentlessly. The Market Response (and Curiosity) Enterprises know AI will transform SecOps — they’re just unsure how. TandemTrace benefits from: * Widespread positive experiences with new AI tools * Curiosity to test AI-native solutions * A growing desire to reduce manual workload in SOCs * Pressure to do more with less staff Almog sees a trend: Customers want to test immediately. Not read whitepapers. Not run slow evaluations. See the agents work in their environment. And once they do, the value appears instantly. “The Best Time Ever to Build” Almog ends with a message to founders: * Barriers to building have collapsed * Claude code + AI tools make small teams unstoppable * Domain expertise is the real differentiator * Problems, not competition, should guide product choices If you’re starting something in cyber — this is your moment. About This Episode Part of Season 1 of Scaling Cyber — the series spotlighting cyber founders and leaders building global companies outside the US/Israel hubs. Host: Ignacio Sbampato (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ignaciosbampato/) — cybersecurity executive, former Chief Business Officer at ESET, founder of BridgerWise (https://bridgerwise.com/).Guest: Almog Ohayon (https://www.linkedin.com/in/almog009/), CEO & Co-Founder, TandemTrace (https://tandemtrace.ai/). This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit scalingcyber.substack.com (https://scalingcyber.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

15. 

    13 Nov 2025

    Inside the Maze: How Labyrinth Is Trolling Hackers and Changing Cyber Defense

    Cybercriminals have long felt like they hold all the power. But what if defenders could flip the script, turning the attackers into the confused ones, lost in a web of fake systems and dead ends? That’s exactly what Labyrinth is doing. Born in Ukraine, built in Poland, and expanding worldwide, the company is leading the new wave of cyber deception, a strategy that lures intruders into decoys, keeps them busy, and buys defenders the time they need to respond. 🎧 Listen to the full conversation on Scaling Cyber: YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@ScalingCyberPodcast) | Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/6ya2wXnAocJvzDfGkAjH8t) | Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scaling-cyber/id1840151010) Turning Defense into Deception Deception isn’t new — honeypots have existed for decades. But Labyrinth’s approach is different. Instead of complex setups that require extra headcount, their platform deploys in minutes and starts catching real threats instantly. Their promise is simple yet radical: * Zero false positives. * Instant visibility. * Built for real-world teams, not research labs. As Pawel puts it: “Deception is the most reliable early-warning system you can have.Nobody should be touching fake systems. If they do, you know.” Pre-Emptive Cybersecurity: From Reaction to Prevention For years, the cybersecurity industry has been stuck in a reactive mindset: “detect and respond.” Now, even Gartner - who has been a strong proponent of Detection and Response - is pushing a new category: Pre-Emptive Security. Labyrinth fits perfectly into this shift. By trapping intruders before they can do harm, it embodies a new defensive philosophy: proactive, psychological, and smart. “It’s not about fear. It’s about changing the game.” — Pawel Built in Europe. Battle-Tested in Ukraine. Labyrinth’s technology has been proven in one of the toughest environments on Earth: Ukraine. As Anastasiia Dorosh, one of the company’s technical leads, shared: “Unfortunately, the war is still happening.But the least we got from it is advancement in cybersecurity.We see real attacks every day — and that makes our solutions real.” In a world where “battle-tested” is more than a buzzword, Labyrinth’s origins matter.Their platform is refined against real adversaries — not just simulated ones. Made in Europe, Scaling Beyond Borders Labyrinth is also part of a growing movement: European-made cybersecurity. Pawel is one of the most vocal advocates of promoting local innovation, not because it’s patriotic, but because it’s quality. “We don’t want people to buy European just because it’s European.We want them to buy it because it’s great.” Their growth strategy is all about partnerships. Instead of selling directly, Labyrinth works with channel partners, MSSPs, and distributors, building trust and reach from Poland to Mexico to Australia. “Our DNA is partner-first. It’s how we scale globally.” Key Takeaways for Cyber Founders * Deception is innovation. If everyone’s chasing detection, go where the attackers least expect you. * Validation beats hype. Let your product prove itself. No marketing needed. * Partnerships scale faster. Global reach doesn’t have to mean huge teams. * Quality is a narrative. “Made in Europe” can stand for technical excellence. * Test in reality. The best cybersecurity products are the ones tested under fire. About This Episode This episode is part of Season 1 of Scaling Cyber — the show where founders and leaders from outside the US and Israel share how they’re building global cybersecurity companies. Host: Ignacio Sbampato (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ignaciosbampato/) — cybersecurity executive, former Chief Business Officer at ESET, and founder of BridgerWise (https://bridgerwise.com/).Guests: Pawel Rybczyk (https://www.linkedin.com/in/rybczykpawel/) & Anastasiia Dorosh (https://www.linkedin.com/in/anastasia-dorosh-work/), from Labyrinth (https://labyrinth.tech/) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit scalingcyber.substack.com (https://scalingcyber.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

16. 

    6 Nov 2025

    The New Frontline of Cybersecurity: Detecting Disinformation Before It Strikes with Andriy Kusyy, CEO of LetsData

    For decades, cybersecurity was about protecting networks and devices. Now, the battlefield has expanded to our screens, our feeds, and our minds. In this episode of Scaling Cyber, we explore how LetsData (https://letsdata.net/), a Ukrainian startup born out of real conflict, is helping governments and enterprises detect information operations and disinformation campaigns to prevent and mitigate the harm they cause. 🎧 Listen to the full conversation on Scaling Cyber: YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@ScalingCyberPodcast) | Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/6ya2wXnAocJvzDfGkAjH8t) | Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scaling-cyber/id1840151010) From AI Research to Information Defense When Andriy Kusyy left his role leading the machine learning platform at Grammarly, he didn’t plan to become a cybersecurity founder. But growing up in Ukraine — a country that’s been on the frontline of information warfare for over a decade — he saw the problem firsthand. What began as a social project with his co-founder Ksenia turned into something much bigger: a platform that analyzes millions of media and social posts across 35 languages, spotting coordinated manipulation and disinformation before it spreads. “We realized there was a gap in the market. Everyone was focused on detecting malware. No one was detecting narratives.” The Rise of “Disinformation Security” Until recently, disinformation was seen as a political or media problem. LetsData is showing it’s now a cybersecurity one. Modern attacks combine AI-generated content, deepfakes, and brand impersonation to harm companies, markets, and reputations. A single false rumor about a bank’s stability can wipe billions from its valuation, or trigger a stock shorting scheme. “These operations used to be run by states. Now, disinformation is for hire. It’s a business.” LetsData’s system translates those signals into actionable intelligence for SOC and threat intel teams, turning chaotic information into structured alerts they can actually respond to. Andriy calls it the bridge between media monitoring and threat intelligence. A new category: Disinformation Security. Why Local Intelligence Matters Unlike traditional threat intel platforms that mostly track English-language data, LetsData’s approach is multilingual-first. The company’s system monitors narratives in 35+ languages, detecting how a campaign may start in Romanian, move through Russian, and eventually hit Spanish-speaking markets. “Disinformation doesn’t respect borders. What starts in one country today can target your customers tomorrow.” This distributed intelligence gives LetsData a unique edge and a mission to defend globally connected organizations before the story becomes the threat. Scaling from Ukraine to the World LetsData’s journey mirrors the resilience of its home country. They started by helping governments like Moldova protect elections, sending over 700 alerts on coordinated disinformation campaigns in just two years. Now, after joining Google’s AI for Startups Accelerator, the company is expanding into the enterprise market, working with banks, telcos, and defense organizations across Europe. Their insights are being integrated into major threat intelligence platforms, and according to Gartner, disinformation management tools could grow from 5% adoption today to 50% by 2028. An entirely new cybersecurity frontier. Key Takeaways for Cyber Founders & Leaders * Create a category when the problem evolves.LetsData didn’t fit neatly into “media monitoring” or “cybersecurity”, so they created a new space: disinformation security. * Build from experience, not theory.Operating in a country that’s been ground zero for information warfare gave the founders credibility and urgency few others have. * Prove value through visibility.LetsData often wins customers by simply showing them what’s already happening, using public data to reveal threats they didn’t know existed. * Simplify action.The company’s focus on actionable alerts (not alert fatigue) gives analysts confidence and builds trust, a cornerstone for any early-stage security vendor. * Trust and credibility scale faster than marketing.Being endorsed by Google and global security forums like Munich Security Conference has helped LetsData open doors that most early-stage companies can’t. About the Episode This conversation is part of Season 1 of Scaling Cyber — the show where founders and leaders from outside the US and Israel share how they’re building global cybersecurity companies. Host: Ignacio Sbampato (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ignaciosbampato/) — cybersecurity executive, former Chief Business Officer at ESET, and founder of BridgerWise (https://bridgerwise.com/).Guest: Andriy Kusyy (https://www.linkedin.com/in/andriy-kusyy/), CEO & Co-Founder of LetsData (https://letsdata.net/). This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit scalingcyber.substack.com (https://scalingcyber.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

17. 

    30 Oct 2025

    Predicting the Future: How BforeAI is Redefining Cybersecurity with Luigi Lenguito

    When the entire cybersecurity industry started chanting “assume breach,” Luigi Lenguito refused to accept that being a victim was inevitable. After nearly two decades at Dell, he left the corporate world to build something radically different — a company that could predict and prevent attacks before they happen. 🎧 Listen to the full conversation on Scaling Cyber: YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@ScalingCyberPodcast) | Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/6ya2wXnAocJvzDfGkAjH8t) | Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scaling-cyber/id1840151010) From Reaction to Prediction Luigi’s vision for BforeAI (https://bfore.ai) was born from a frustration shared by many in cybersecurity: Why are we still reacting to breaches instead of stopping them before they start? Instead of detection and response, BforeAI focuses on pre-crime intelligence — anticipating malicious infrastructure before it’s weaponized. Their promise is so bold, they literally back it with a “Pre-Crime Guarantee”: if an attack slips through, the company refunds 10x the contract value. That’s not just marketing. It’s a mindset shift — from fear-based cybersecurity to trust-based prevention. Thanks for reading Scaling Cyber! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Scaling from Europe to the World BforeAI’s growth story is equally unconventional. While most European startups scale locally before dreaming of the US, Luigi did the opposite — he went straight for the global stage. “70% of the cybersecurity market is in the US.If you want to be a global leader, there’s no other way than being a leader there first.” His approach borrows from the Israeli playbook: start global, not regional. That mindset — paired with relentless travel and strategic partnerships — has helped BforeAI secure Gartner recognition in 39 reports in just 36 months and protect over 40 million people daily. Building Distributed, Diverse, and Decisive Teams BforeAI was born during COVID — fully distributed from day one. But for Luigi, it’s not just about remote work; it’s about meritocracy and access to global talent. “Intelligence is equally distributed around the world — opportunity is not.” His teams span continents, time zones, and backgrounds. And diversity, especially gender diversity, isn’t a checkbox — it’s a competitive advantage. As an ambassador for Women4Cyber (https://women4cyber.eu), Luigi actively champions bringing more women into technical and leadership roles in security. A KPI Like No Other Here’s a metric you won’t find on any investor dashboard: 100% of BforeAI’s buyers have been promoted within six months of deploying the product. Luigi calls it his “CEO KPI.” Because at the end of the day, the real measure of success isn’t just protecting organizations — it’s empowering the people who make bold decisions. Key Takeaways for Cyber Founders * Challenge industry dogma. If everyone “assumes breach,” maybe the opportunity lies in preventing it. * Go where the market is. If your ambition is global, start with the biggest stage. * Diversity is strategy. Different perspectives mean better defense and innovation. * Build with trust. Back your promise — literally — and watch the market respond. * Lead with conviction. Predictive security sounded like sci-fi until someone built it. About the Episode This conversation is part of Season 1 of Scaling Cyber — the show where founders and leaders from outside the US and Israel share how they’re building global cybersecurity companies. Host: Ignacio Sbampato (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ignaciosbampato/) — cybersecurity executive, former Chief Business Officer at ESET, and founder of BridgerWise (https://bridgerwise.com/).Guest: Luigi Lenguito (https://www.linkedin.com/in/luigilenguito/), CEO & Co-Founder of BforeAI. Thanks for reading Scaling Cyber! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit scalingcyber.substack.com (https://scalingcyber.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

18. 

    9 Oct 2025

    Discover the Future Global Cybersecurity Leaders | Cybersecurity Podcast

    Welcome to Scaling Cyber (https://scalingcyber.bridgerwise.com), the podcast that shines a spotlight on cybersecurity founders and leaders outside the US and Israel — from Europe, LATAM, Africa, APAC, and beyond. Hosted by Ignacio Sbampato (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ignaciosbampato/) — cybersecurity executive, entrepreneur, investor, and former Chief Business Officer at ESET — this show brings you authentic, founder-led stories of how ambitious startups are scaling globally, overcoming go-to-market challenges, and breaking into international markets. 👉 In this teaser episode, Ignacio shares why Scaling Cyber exists, who it’s for, and what you can expect from Season 1. If you’re a founder, operator, investor, security leader, or just passionate about cyber innovation, this podcast will give you insights into the next generation of global cyber leaders. 🔔 Subscribe now so you don’t miss the first season of episodes featuring inspiring founders from Spain, South Africa, Poland, Belgium, Germany, Czech Republic, Ukraine, France, and beyond. 📌 Learn more at: https://scalingcyber.bridgerwise.com (https://scalingcyber.bridgerwise.com) Thanks for visiting Scaling Cyber! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and episodes. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit scalingcyber.substack.com (https://scalingcyber.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

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