Meet them in The Hague on the 5th and 6th of April
With the aim of building a strong European cybersecurity ecosystem and promote European excellence, the Cybersecurity STARtup Award selects each year ten tech start-ups to pitch their solutions to a jury of cybersecurity experts and win a unique business opportunity. In this interview, meet finalist Nect.
What cybersecurity values does your business bring forward?
The highest value of any cybersecurity company is the trust of the customer. To earn that trust, it’s important for companies to have the certifications they need to fully meet security standards. Certifications that prove the security of a technology. For this purpose, demanding criteria, which offer consumers the guarantee that their data is protected, are established. With the appropriate certification, a company achieves a new standard and can operate throughout Europe. This gives companies the opportunity to expand into new markets and industries, both at B2B and B2C level. With its multi-patented and inhouse developed technology, Nect is known to offer high level of quality at security related software. Through it’s identity verification process, users can verify their identity to get online access to health insurance companies, telecommunications providers or banks, among others. User trust is always a top priority for the Nect team, which is why all data centers are located in Germany and operated by Nect itself, so that Nect is not dependent on third-party providers. To live up to the trust, security and privacy by design are deeply embedded in Nect’s culture. Trust forms the basis of innovation. This is confirmed, among other things, by Nect delivering the first eIDAS certified fully automatic, video-based identity verification in Germany. The technology is listed with the German Federal Network Agency as a video identification with automated procedure and thus meets the requirements of eIDAS, the German Trust Service Act (VDG) and the German Trust Service Ordinance (VDV). The eIDAS certification proves that the Nect Technology offers an equivalent security in terms of reliability compared to presence. This means that the identity of customers is verified digitally in strict compliance with European regulations. Customers can identify themselves independently and without being tied to a specific location, which saves them time in the registration process and, for companies,some costs . Fraud attempts are detected by various security checks, e.g. optical variable security checks on the ID document and liveness of the user during the process.
We want to meet your team! Can you present it and tell us what makes it unique?
In April 2017, the company was founded by Benny Bennet Jürgens and Carlo Ulbrich, who came up with the idea of founding a company while pushing a stroller. Jürgens, CEO, previously worked for a global insurance company, where he recognised the challenges of remote identity verification processes that were common just a few years ago: low conversion rates, enormous costs and quality deficiencies. This made Jürgens to think about a better solution. The Nect team consists of strong, individual, and creative minds in a unique combination. Each talent continues to develop the technology and the company, which is especially evident through the steady growth. Since 2018, the team has grown from five employees to nearly 110 in 2022 in more EU countries, including Spain, Poland, as well as the DACH region.
What is your desired outcome from this experience? What do you hope to achieve?
At Nect, we enable with our technology our users to have a simple and, above all, secure user experience because security and trust are our highest credo. Being among the 10 selected European start-ups to participate in the STARTup Award Competition confirms that what we do is an important and right step within a digital and cybersecure ecosystem. Furthermore, the STARTup Award Competition offers the opportunity to raise awareness of our solution beyond Germany’s borders and that even small, non-governmental companies can offer the opportunity to overcome hurdles.
See you in The Hague!
