A panel of experts has selected five companies to compete in the live pitch at it-sa Expo&Congress. 

Peter Kaiser, Head of Portfolio and Partner Strategy at Deutsche Telekom Security, sums up: "We on the jury are very impressed by the diversity and high quality of the applications and the strength of the transnational start-up ecosystem. The spectrum ranged from technical topics such as network security, cloud, and AI to data protection and compliance, and this year offered a surprising amount of operational security and hardware-based security. We congratulate all the nominees and look forward to the live pitches."

These startups are competing for the ATHENE Startup Award UP24@it-sa:

AlpenShield offers a cost-effective and efficient solution for security operations. With its SaaS offering based on Microsoft Sentinel, the company enables automatic enrichment and processing of incidents. Customers can also manage these independently via a user-friendly app in Microsoft Teams without needing expert knowledge of Sentinel.

Today, more than 95% of data access rights are not used. To minimize this vulnerability, CyberDesk helps automate control over who can access which sensitive data and how. For human and non-human identities, the provider thus reduces security risks where existing IAM solutions, including privileged access management and identity governance and administration, are blind.

LocateRisk enables companies to improve their IT security processes and preventive protection against cyberattacks with automated risk analyses and digitized workflows. The results can be used to eliminate potential vulnerabilities and demonstrate the effectiveness of security measures. This accelerates both internal attack surface management and IT risk management in the supply chain.

Mitigant is a SaaS solution for cloud-native security and cyber resilience. It proactively protects cloud infrastructures in AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Kubernetes from attacks. As the world's first comprehensive platform for emulating cloud attacks, it tests the readiness and resilience of cloud infrastructures. A 15-minute onboarding process ensures that infrastructures are secure, compliant, and resilient.

RedMimicry is a semi-automated solution for emulating cyber attacks. The platform enables cyber defense measures to be tested against realistic scenarios that are modeled on current threats. RedMimicry offers various playbooks for this purpose, ranging from malware to the emulation of targeted attacks.

Startups also presented on the it-sa 365 digital platform
The pitch candidates will be presenting themselves virtually on October 8 as part of Digital Preview Day. Two weeks before the start of the trade fair, this free digital format offers a preview of important program items such as the ATHENE Startup Award UP24@it-sa.

More information on the ATHENE Startup Award UP24@it-sa: https://www.itsa365.de/de-de/actions-events/events/up-award 

If you have any questions, please contact Clara Pfeuffer, T +49 6151 869-133 clara.pfeuffer@athene-center.de. 

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