This startup fills the gap on cybersecurity awareness

Right-Hand Cybersecurity does not only monitor cyber risks, but also educates the users.

Cybersecurity remains a huge problem in Singapore and its circuit breaker period even made it worse as flocks of vulnerable users are exposed to online threats. But despite using various programmes and services to block out these threats, lack of awareness on how to and why they should prevent such problems still pose a threat. To bridge this gap, cybersecurity platform Right-Hand has come up with a solution that not only detects cyber risks but also educates online users.

Right-Hand Cybersecurity provides a SaaS platform to help organisations monitor, measure and mitigate human-induced cyber risks that could lead to a data breach. Theo Nasser, CEO & co-founder of Right-Hand, told Singapore Business Review that some of their customers stated that traditional e-learning videos and on-site training were not effectively influencing positive cybersecurity behavioral change across their workforce because it doesn’t scale across an enterprise; employees wouldn’t take such videos seriously, and it was difficult to measure if the said methods are effective.

“The major pain point we address is one that has plagued the cybersecurity industry for a long time; that people are responsible for roughly 90% of data breaches. Cyber attackers are so sophisticated that traditional perimeter defense layers are simply not enough. Strengthening and leveraging the human (employee) layer of defense has become critical for organisations to bolster themselves against malicious actors.”

The startup offers three products that are each sold as an annual software subscription. One is its ‘Compliance Readiness’ product, which automates the creation and delivery of employee assessments based on a customer’s set of corporate policies (i.e., Data Privacy policy) to determine if a user is compliant or not.

The second product is ‘Phishing Readiness’, which sends simulated and customised spear-phishing emails to identify users who are most susceptible to email attacks, in order to condition them to be more vigilant.

Lastly, their ‘Training Readiness’ product sends customised, gamified and three-minute training modules to educate users on the cyber essentials. “Our Training Readiness product can also be integrated with Phishing Readiness and Compliance Readiness to deliver training modules the moment a user engages phishing email or fails a compliance assessment,” Nasser explained.

Prices are based on the number of email users within the organisation. Nasser claims that their cybersecurity subscriptions are cheaper than an organisation’s annual mailbox subscription to G Suite or Office 365.

In March, Right-Hand raised about $1.42m (US$1m) in a seed funding round led by Atlas Ventures. Nasser stated that they will use it to build two new products in 2020, incorporating machine learning and natural language processing into their existing platform.

Commenting on the funding round, Atlas Ventures’ investment director Maxim Shkvaruk said that they believe Right-Hand’s products will be in high demand in more developed countries, especially in the US and Europe.

“Most companies focus on technical solutions like threat detection systems and firewalls. and neglect to invest in employee cybersecurity awareness. We felt that Right-Hand was in a solid position to fill this large, overlooked gap in the market. The company also showed early signs of product-market fit, closing an enterprise client within months of going live,” Shkvaruk stated.