Cybersecurity company Phished receives 7.5 million euros
The Leuven cybersecurity company Phished will have access to 7.5 million euros in additional capital over the next four years thanks to a convertible loan provided by the Welfare Fund.
Phished, the brainchild of CTO Arnout Van de Meulebroucke and led by serial entrepreneur Jo Vandebergh, is in the final stages of achieving its first major corporate goal – an annual recurring turnover of 12 million euros.
“Our new goal is to grow Phished to an ARR of 20 million euros by 2027. The capital injection through the Welfare Fund will provide an extra boost and allow us to further scale in our sales and marketing”, said Phished CEO Jo Vandebergh . Phished will also use the acquired resources to accelerate its international growth and continue to invest significantly in cyber research.
The story of the Leuven cybersecurity company Phished starts in 2019 when Arnout Van de Meulebroucke came up with the idea of using AI-driven simulations to make employees aware of phishing emails. He presented the idea to his then boss at Bringme, Jo Vandebergh, who immediately invested 1 million euros to launch the startup. Over the past four years, Phished grew to a team of 50 employees and the company was further financially supported by Vandebergh, who gradually invested an additional 8 million euros.
Behavioral change to stay one step ahead of hackers
In just 48 months, cybersecurity company Phished grew into a holistic training platform with a mapped out learning path that helps employees strengthen their cyber resilience.
Phished – unlike its competitors – not only focuses on employee awareness, but especially on behavioral change. The training platform combines simulations and short training sessions, teaches users cyber hygiene for the maintenance of applications and devices and provides concrete threat warnings that alert users to the latest techniques used by hackers.
Employees and teams can also obtain certificates through Phished. The AI-driven platform also predicts, based on a Behavioral Risk ScoreTM, the likelihood that a company or organization will be hacked due to human error.
