Estonian scaleup DigiFlak has joined the EIT Digital Accelerator to gain access to market and finance as to grow globally. The company develops Flak Secuter, a highly innovative all-in-one device that secures and protects computer-held data for its entire "internet life."
Estonian Cyber Security scaleup DigiFlak are the developers of the Flak Secuter*, a highly innovative all-inone device that secures and protects computer-held data for its entire "internet life". DigiFlak has now joined the EIT Digital Accelerator to gain access to market and finance as to grow globally.
Founded in 2013, DigiFlak helps companies and individuals to easily manage and fully protect digital identities and sensitive information with a personal hardware-software solution. The company was the winner of the Cyber Security & Privacy category of the 2015 EIT Digital Challenge - the first Estonian company ever to take the top prize in this Pan-European competition. Now, it's to claim another title as the first Estonian scaleup to join the EIT Digital Accelerator scaleup program.
"We came up with the idea of Flak Secuters back in 2005. But, due to the lack of specific hardware on the market, we were only able to do some initial basic experiments on professional, non-dedicated and quite expensive equipment. Today, the situation has changed with dedicated, affordable chip hardware now available, alongside new technologies," says Maxim Kostin, the founder and CEO of DigiFlak.
He continues: "We made our dream come true and are quite proud of the results. Now we want to share this with our customers. We're looking forward to working with EIT Digital and the Digital Accelerator scaleup program to make this possible by helping us to open doors and find new customers, partners and opportunities."
"We are excited to have DigiFlak in our portfolio of ambitious Cyber Security and Privacy scaleups. DigiFlak is a great example of the positive power of our scaleup activities by being also an EIT Digital Challenge Competition winner. The EIT Digital innovation funnel is developed to help scaleups like DigiFlak with sufficiently mature technology, clear market focus, and an excellent team with business champion like DigFlak CEO Maxim Kostin," says Dolf Wittkämper, Head of the EIT Digital Accelerator.
Dolf Wittkämper continues: "Acceleration is a key aspect of EIT Digital's innovation strategy, and EIT Digital focuses on scaleups-startups that are ready to scale commercially in Europe and beyond. The main value proposition of the EIT Digital Accelerator is Access-to-Market and Access-to-Finance, which translates into fast-growing average revenues and average funds realised by the supported startups."
DigiFlak will be part of EIT Digital's Digital Infrastructure Action Line, focusing on enabling digital transformation by providing secure, robust, responsive and intelligent communications and computation facilities for markets. Digital Infrastructure targets in networking the mobile broadband infrastructure, network softwarisation, and the Internet of Things; in computing: cloud computing, Big Data, and Artificial Intelligence; in security: privacy, cyber security, and digital ID management.
The EIT Digital Accelerator comprises a team of experienced business developers and finance experts operating from 13 cities across Europe as well as a hub in San Francisco. Since 2012, they have supported more than 200 startups to access new markets and helped them raise more than €77 million in investment to date. As part of the Accelerator the Access to Finance program opens doors to European and international venture capital funds, helping company founders and CEOs get all-important first-meetings with investors seeking to finance fast-growth business opportunities.
As an Estonian domiciled company DigiFlak is supported via ARISE Europe, EIT Digital's implementation of the EIT Regional Innovation Scheme (RIS).
ARISE Europe is designed to stimulate regional growth in EU countries where EIT Digital is not present with one of its Node or Associate Partners. Its objective is to connect local and regional innovation centres and their ecosystems to EIT Digital's innovation and education ecosystem. The ARISE programme now includes innovation centres from Austria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Poland, Portugal and Slovenia. Inspired by its ARISE Europe program, EIT Digital is one of the co-organisers of the 2017 Startup Nations Summit to be held in Tallinn, Estonia, in November 20-22, 2017.
*DigiFlak manufactures Flak security USB dongles (also known as “secuters”), licences its technologies (OEM) and offers premium services and third party applications via its online Flak Store. The secuter is a USB/Near Field Communication (NFC) connected microcomputer, which implements strong multifactor and password-less user authentication on social and corporate web resources. It secures user traffic in a real-time, creates protected connections in one click, prevents phishing and fraud attacks, encrypts and signs users’ data, manages passwords and certificates in isolated and many other environments, including access control and secure sharing for physical resources like offices, apartments and cars, vans, or cargo.
