© StartUpSecure I ATHENE

From the beginning of May, the eleven founding teams will go through the intensive program. Their development is to be accelerated through coaching and exchange with experts. The teams can take advantage of targeted workshops on start-up-related topics and receive individual support from a mentor. At the end of the program, the teams pitch their business idea to a jury of representatives from well-known companies. The program is supported by the main partner Schwarz Digital and the partner Hays AG. The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research is funding the accelerator program as part of the "StartUpSecure" initiative.

Kick-off event
Dror Liwer, founder of Coro from the cybersecurity startup nation Israel, will give a keynote speech to kick off the program and share valuable tips from founders for founders. The winner of the last Accelerator round, Dr. Kevin Füchsel from Quantum Optics Jena, will report on his experiences with the program in a keynote speech. Four successful founders from the cybersecurity incubator ecosystem will be represented with a pitch: Alex Wyllie, founder of IT-Seal; Johannes Korves, founder of Nativ.AI; Dr. Matteo Große-Kampmann, founder of Aware 7; and Rohit Bohara, founder of asvin.  At the end of the event, the eleven new startups in the program will introduce themselves to the guests. The kick-off event on May 4 at 14:00 - 16:00 can be followed live via the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_YOn7N_AFw.

Eleven innovative cybersecurity startups from Germany.

The teams from all over Germany that qualified for SpeedUpSecure offer different solutions and technologies. From secure artificial intelligence to zero trust to data protection, a wide range of cybersecurity topics are covered. What all startups have in common is that they have applied for funding as part of the StartUpSecure initiative of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). They are accompanied and advised by one of the incubators for cybersecurity in Bochum, Darmstadt, Karlsruhe and Saarbücken. As part of the application process for the BMBF's StartUpSecure funding, the projects were extensively reviewed in advance in terms of their innovation as well as their technical and commercial prospects for success, which also enabled them to qualify for the accelerator. With the financial resources from the BMBF's StartUpSecure funding and the intensive Accelerator program, the startups now have the best prerequisites to get off the ground.

The participating startups are

• ai.dopt
• Cybervize
• Devity
• Fuse.Space
• Identeco
• Lubis EDA
• Queryella
• Sanctuary
• TimeLords
• Savian
• Validaitor

Strong network supports the startup teams

In SpeedUpSecure, the teams are guided, advised and accompanied by a network of partners from the business world. As coaches, mentors and jurors, the experts from the network contribute their expertise and experience to ensure that the startup teams are offered a comprehensive and high-quality program with the SpeedUpSecure accelerator.

Schwarz Digital and HAYS AG fund the sponsors prizes.

Schwarz Digital is the main sponsor of the Accelerator and provides prize money for the first, second and third prize, which will be awarded at the final pitch event.

Schwarz Digital is a company of the Schwarz Group. With 550,000 employees in 32 countries, it is one of the world's leading retail groups. Based in Neckarsulm, Baden-Württemberg, the two retail divisions Lidl and Kaufland form the pillars in food retailing. In addition, Schwarz Produktion is active in food production and PreZero in environmental services. This makes the Schwarz Group one of the few retail groups to cover the entire value chain - from production and retail to disposal and recycling. Furthermore, a great deal of expertise has been built up over many years in the field of digitization and IT, and IT solutions have been developed in-house from which other companies are now also benefiting. For example, the cloud and colocation provider STACKIT and the cybersecurity service provider XM Cyber offer superior digital services for companies and administrations. "Young founders with fresh ideas and fun are an enormously important resource," emphasizes Dr. Alexander Schellong, responsible for cybersecurity activities at Schwarz Digital. "With solution-oriented, creative approaches, they contribute to essential innovations in cybersecurity. This is inspiring and we need to encourage it."

The company HAYS AG also finances an innovation award as a sponsoring partner. HAYS is one of the most successful personnel consulting companies with over 50 years of experience and more than 10,000 employees worldwide. Hays advises on all aspects of the dynamic world of work and helps its clients to make the right decisions with its expertise. The placement of cybersecurity specialists is one of Hays' focus areas. Commenting on the partnership with the initiators of the SpeedUpSecure accelerator, Michael Beaupre, Head of Cybersecurity at Hays, says: "Cybersecurity cannot be achieved by individual institutions. It must be achieved collectively - through transparent, collaborative and unified partnerships."

Four incubators for cybersecurity
The startup incubator StartUpSecure at the National Research Center for Applied Cybersecurity ATHENE in Darmstadt has launched the accelerator. It is supported by the partner incubators for cybersecurity CISPA in Saarbrücken, Cube 5 in Bochum and StartUpSecure KASTEL in Karlsruhe as well as the Digital Hub Cybersecurity in Darmstadt. Together, they are now offering the program for selected startups from their ecosystems for the third year in a row. The four incubators are funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research through the StartUpSecure initiative.

About the start-up incubator StartUpSecure at the research center ATHENE

ATHENE is a research center of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft in cooperation with the Fraunhofer Institutes SIT and IGD as well as the Technical University of Darmstadt, the Goethe University Frankfurt and the University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt. ATHENE is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Hessian Ministry of Science and the Arts (HMWK). Under the umbrella of ATHENE, start-up projects in the field of cybersecurity are supported. The incubator StartUpSecure at ATHENE promotes the development of innovations in the field of cybersecurity. The incubator team is based at the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology SIT and at the Department of Information Systems at Darmstadt University of Technology.