Germany’s SoSafe raises $73M Series B led by Highland to address human error in cyber

As we’ve learned in the last few years, ‘human error’-led cyber security breaches are the ones companies often find it hardest to guard against. Surveys suggest some 85% of attacks can be traced back to the human factor. Thus startups built to alleviate this gap — such as the UK’s Cybsafe which raises $7-9m last year — are proliferating. Addressing human behavior is clearly one of the hottest new areas for cyber.

The latest to scale up in this space is SoSafe. The Cologne-based cybersecurity awareness and testing platform has now raised a $73 million Series B funding round led by growth-capital fund Highland Europe.

Existing investors Acton Capital and Global Founders Capital were joined by SAP Hybris founder and Celonis Advisory Board member Carsten Thoma together with La Famiglia as well as Adjust founder Christian Henschel as participants.

SoSafe competes with platforms like Knowbe4 (that went public in 2021) and Cofense which has raised $58M to date.

SoSafe says it takes a user-centered approach to cyber security, using insights from behavioral science to nudge users in the right, and safer, direction, using gamified methods to teach end-users what to look out for in a cyber-attack.

It now has over 1,500 customers including Aldi, Ceconomy AG, Taylor Wessing, Vattenfall and Valtech.

Dr. Niklas Hellemann, co-founder and managing director of SoSafe, said: “Challenging the existing paradigms in security awareness and human risk management, we have seen tremendous adoption of our platform and extraordinary growth.”

Lead investor Highland Europe has previously backed security companies such as Malwarebytes, Cobalt, and ActiveFence.

Gajan Rajanathan, partner at Highland Europe, said: “SoSafe’s founders have built a trusted cybersecurity awareness and testing platform, underpinned by behavioral analytics and human risk scoring that sustainably protects the most important threat surface in cybersecurity – human security breaches. They have rapidly emerged as one of the leading software scale-ups, experiencing incredible momentum in a short period of time.”