Cyber Risks have been on the rise globally throughout the last couple of years, with Covid19 accelerating this trend drastically. For example, the BitDefender 2020 Consumer Threat Landscape Report highlighted a 485% increase in ransomware between 2019 and 2020! Cyber risks are an important part of the risk landscape and will become more critical over the coming years.

SMEs are the backbone of the European business fabric: at around 25 million, they represent 99% of all businesses and employ approximately 100m people, accounting for half of Europe’s GDP. They are also becoming more and more digitized.

However, SMEs are still vastly under-equipped to deal with the rise of cyber risks. On the one hand, the high-level knowledge of the risk involved with cyber-attacks seems to be improving. In a recent survey of 249 European SMEs by the EU Agency for Cybersecurity, 85 % of respondents noted that cyber securities issues would severely impact their business. In contrast, looking at the measures taken by these same SMEs to protect themselves from cyber risks, less than 30% had a comprehensive approach across the organization.

European SMEs face the growing threats of cyber risks and are vastly unequipped behaviorally, technologically, or financially to deal with those threats.

Enter the team at Stoik, whom we had the opportunity to meet early on in their journey. Their product combines detection, prevention, and insurance from day 1. SMEs can quickly assess their external risks, understand critical remediations, and insure themselves against cyber threats. The team continuously adds assessments to new threats, including internal risks, as part of the platform.

Joining forces with Alven, Kima Ventures, and an impressive raft of angel investors, we are proud to be part of their € 3.8 million seed round. We couldn’t be more excited to support the team behind Stoik: Jules Veyrat, Alexandre Andreini, Nicolas Sayer, Philippe Mangematin, and many others who have since joined the team on their journey to build the first and most important cyber insurance solution for SMEs in Europe.