Competition Overview
The European Cybersecurity STARtup Award was created to increase the awareness and visibility of state-of-the-art cybersecurity companies in Europe, both at the European and the global levels. A robust European cybersecurity industry means a better protected digital Europe.
European cybersecurity solution providers (particularly smaller companies) have often struggled for visibility in a fragmented European market. ECSO envisages therefore that this initiative will thus increase the European cybersecurity posture across citizens, businesses, and society, by increasing the prevalence of European uptake of European solutions.
The Award is built around a shared belief that European cybersecurity companies delivering ground-breaking cybersecurity solutions need recognition and investment support to be able to scale up and develop their business in Europe.
The Award leverages ECSO's Cyber Investors Day, a well-established cybersecurity business matchmaking event, and similar events organised by ECSO’s partner organisations to create an initiative recognising the most promising European cybersecurity startups and SMEs.
Mission & Objectives
The Award links a series of local competitions endorsed by ECSO. The winners of each local event are selected by the respective local juries according to a setlist of criteria provided by ECSO and nominated for the final competition. Local winners are asked to present their solutions to the European jury, consisting of international investors, CISOs, representatives of large cybersecurity companies, ECSO representatives and cybersecurity experts, which make the final decision.
European Cybersecurity STARtup Award has the ambition to become one of the key European initiatives, alongside ECSO’s Cyber Investor Days and its recent proposal to create a European cybersecurity fund-of-funds. These initiatives are dedicated to the consolidation of the still highly fragmented European cybersecurity market and strengthening of its entire cybersecurity ecosystem
Competition Entry Details