Security

5 Cybersecurity Startups Serving Fintechs and FSIs in Southeast Asia

Technology and digitalization are changing the way we spend, save and lend, and with more and more products and services being delivered online, cybersecurity and fraud have become a major area of concern for fintechs and the financial services industry.

According to a 2019 fintech research by PwC, in partnership with the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology and Ping An Academy of Financial Security, 71% of industry participants consider data security and privacy protection to be the biggest cybersecurity issue to address, and 61% already apply anti-fraud applications, dynamic risk monitoring and user behavior analytics etc. to drive financial services.

With cybersecurity being now so critical for fintechs, we look today at five cybersecurity startups serving the fintech and financial services industry in Southeast Asia. Most of these startups are newcomers and made significant achievements in 2019 including raising funding, and gaining support from notable organizations.

Right-Hand

Right-Hand is a Singapore-based cybersecurity startup that provides a platform for organizations to monitor, measure, and mitigate employee-inflicted cyber risk in real-time. The platform analyzes employee behavior in real time, and then produces analytics and training modules to educate employees on their potentially risky behaviors. The company’s products also help users become less susceptible to phishing attempts and comply with internal policies.

Right-Hand’s solutions are currently being used by government agencies and financial sectors across Southeast Asia and Australia.

The startup raised US$1 million in a seed funding round in March 2020 led by early-stage venture capital (VC) fund Atlas Ventures, with participation from SGInnovate, an investment firm backed by the Singapore government, and Entrepreneur First. It said it will use the capital to support its product roadmap by expanding its engineering, research and data science teams.

Keyless

Keyless is a deeptech, cybersecurity company founded in 2019 by experienced entrepreneurs and leading security experts. The startup is building a privacy-preserving authentication and personal identity management platform that leverages blockchain and biometric technologies to eliminate the need for businesses to centrally store and manage passwords, sensitive cryptographic keys and other authentication data, without compromising on convenience and privacy for their users.

Keyless serves various sectors including e-wallets, fintech, banking, travel, healthcare and government. The startup raised US$2.2 million in a pre-seed funding round in the summer of 2019 and completed a pre-seed extension at the end of the year, which brought its total funding to over US$3 million.

At present, Keyless is filing its first non-provisional patent applications.

The startup is headquartered in London with offices in Rome, New York City, and Singapore.

OneKIY

Based in Singapore, OneKIY is the developer of a cybersecurity software platform intended to provide user-control security key that can be used for authentication, secure data and files. The company’s platform offers a decentralized user-controlled data security system for cloud, blockchain and fintech services, enabling users to protect their digital data privacy without third party intervention.

OneKIY was one of the ten cybersecurity startups that graduated in May 2019 from the ICE71 Accelerate program. ICE71 is a partnership between Singtel Innov8, the corporate venture capital arm of the Singtel Group, and NUS Enterprise, the entrepreneurial arm of the National University of Singapore (NUS).

Horangi

Singapore-based Horangi is a CREST-accredited company that provides a cybersecurity platform designed to aid senior leaders, IT departments, developers, and security professionals from businesses of all sizes identify vulnerabilities in their network and remediating them. Horangi’s integrated cybersecurity platform is built to comprehensively secure organizations with enterprise-grade technology in the cloud.

The company was founded in 2016 by ex-Palantir cybersecurity experts Paul Hadjy and Lee Sult, and counts amongst its customers leading tech and fintech companies including Go-Jek, MoneySmart, PropertyGuru, Jirnexu, StashAway, WeLab and Mdaq.

Last year, Horangi launched Warden, a cloud security product that allows organizations to continuously protect their cloud environment with Warden as the single go-to security management tool. Warden has more than 145 security rules and recently added regulatory compliance checks specific to both Singapore fintech organizations and regulated organizations around the world.

Seconize

Founded in 2017 in Bangalore, Seconize is a young startup providing enterprise cloud-based, AI/ML-enabled, automated security solutions. Seconize helps these companies to de-risk themselves by proactive risk assessment, remediation, and identification. It also manages all the IT assets with real-time risk measurement and without any human error.

Last year, Seconize got support from Singapore telecom operator Singtel and NUS, and expanded its office in the city-state.