SoSafe Cyber Security Awareness: $73M Series B

Founded in 2018 in Cologne and after announcing its Seed round in July 2020, SoSafe has seen a record year and has tripled its headcount to more than 250 employees in 2021. With the fresh funding, SoSafe will accelerate its presence in international markets and scale the development of its behavioral science-based, human-centric security solution, and aims to double the team to 500 employees

With its agile and human-centric cybersecurity awareness platform, SoSafe takes a uniquely user-centered approach to cyber security. With 85% of attacks traced back to the human factor, the SoSafe awareness platform uses insights from behavioral science to drive sustainable behavioral change. End-users enjoy the deep gamification embedded throughout the platform, while admins benefit from the easy setup and high degree of customization that enables continuous monitoring of human-based security risk. By fostering and scaling security culture, organizations can thus protect themselves from costly attacks.

This approach has seen SoSafe become the go-to trusted security awareness provider for more than 1,500 organizations worldwide including Aldi, Taylor Wessing, Vattenfall and Valtech. It is now one of the largest awareness platforms based in Europe and has been recognized in independent industry reports from analysts Gartner and Forrester.

Disrupting the security awareness status quo by leveraging the power of behavioral science: the investment further emphasizes SoSafe’s science-backed approach is gaining industry traction. Cybercrime is rising and is expected to cost organizations an alarming $6 trillion in 2021 alone. While many awareness solutions focus solely on checking off compliance requirements, SoSafe’s mission is to disrupt the status quo and let employees take a center-stage in organizational security.

Dr. Niklas Hellemann – psychologist, co-founder and managing director of SoSafe – says: “Challenging the existing paradigms in security awareness and human risk management, we have seen tremendous adoption of our platform and extraordinary growth. We will now increase our international footprint further as well as advance our position as the leading second-generation security awareness and human risk platform, deeply rooted in behavioral science.”

$73 million to double down on global expansion – Gajan Rajanathan, partner at Highland Europe, acknowledges SoSafe’s advantageous position:  “SoSafe’s founders have built a trusted cybersecurity awareness and testing platform, underpinned by behavioral analytics and human risk scoring that sustainably protects the most important threat surface in cybersecurity – human security breaches. They have rapidly emerged as one of the leading software scale-ups, experiencing incredible momentum in a short period of time. We are thrilled to now be a part of SoSafe’s journey and help them empower organizations and employees in protecting their digital and human assets.”

“As they expand their product and market vision, we have no doubt SoSafe will join the ranks of the latest global category leaders.” -- Gajan Rajanathan, Highland Europe

Having set ambitious goals for the coming years, the team is looking to further build the organizational foundation and expand the workforce globally. In the past year, the SoSafe team has continued to grow with more than 160 employees having joined the company in 2021. SoSafe is now approaching a diverse team of over 250 people, representing 22 nationalities, located across seven countries.

Carsten Thoma, founder of SAP Hybris and Celonis Board member, adds: “The team at SoSafe are now entering the next stage of organizational scaling that I know very well from building a global SaaS business. I am very excited to support the team in making SoSafe a global tech champion.”

SoSafe empowers organizations to build a security culture and mitigate risk with its GDPR-compliant awareness programs. Founded in Cologne, Germany, in 2018 by Dr. Niklas Hellemann, Lukas Schaefer, and Felix Schuerholz, it now serves more than 1,500 customers worldwide and is a European leader in security awareness and training. Powered by behavioral science and smart algorithms, SoSafe delivers engaging, personalized learning experiences and smart attack simulations that turn employees into active assets against online threats.