0:08

Your podcast and YouTube blog covering the German startup scene with news,

0:15

Interviews, and live events.

0:19

Hello and welcome everybody. This is Joe from StartupRate.io,

0:23

your startup podcast and YouTube blog from Germany.

0:26

Your go-to podcast for startup tech and innovations inside. Today,

0:31

we have a special guest, Jens Philipp Jung, CEO of Link11, a leader in DDoS

0:36

protection and one of the top 40 under 40 by Capital.

0:40

If you ever wondered how to scale a tech business or navigate the challenges

0:45

of cybersecurity in today's rapidly evolving market, this episode is for you.

0:50

Let's dive into Philipp's entrepreneurial journey, leadership lessons and innovations

0:55

in the cybersecurity space. Jens, welcome.

0:59

Hi, Jaron. Very nice to be here. Welcome, everybody.

1:03

Totally my pleasure. Let me spend a few words on our enabler today.

1:08

This recording was made possible by HTII and the Enterprise Europe Network Hessen.

1:13

These organizations have made tremendous contributions to helping startup businesses

1:16

succeed and thrive, providing a range of services from helping to find grants

1:21

to ongoing partnerships. By taking advantage of these resources, startup companies can network and develop

1:27

innovative strategies for success on the international stage.

1:31

The dedicated support of HTNI and the Enterprise Europe Network Hessen is paramount

1:36

in providing startup businesses with the tools for lasting success.

1:40

Learn more on htii.de and en-hessen.de.

1:45

So now that we got that out of the way, Jens, thank you for joining us today.

1:51

Let's start with your journey. What sparked your interest in technology and

1:55

cybersecurity in the first place? Have you been a juvenile hacker?

2:02

I wish, but unfortunately, I mainly used, when I was young, the computer for entertaining myself.

2:09

So I was a passionate gamer.

2:12

I mean, I was born in 83 and then get in touch with the first computers.

2:17

And yeah, instead of doing something really useful with it, I spent my time in gaming with it.

2:24

I would say the largest useful use of it was probably organizing LAN parties back in these days.

2:30

So this was also why I was already very much familiar with networks and connecting

2:37

computers and building these events and these infrastructure for the LAN parties back in these days,

2:45

long before you were able to play with a good latency online.

2:50

Yes, I remember those parties where you really had to physically bring your

2:56

computer. I even remember the time when you have those red coaxial cables and

3:01

need to screw them in and stuff like this. Yeah, good times. And I do know a lot of our audience is about the same age rate.

3:11

What games did you play?

3:12

Oh, it was primarily Counter-Strike. I heard it's still a thing today.

3:18

Luckily, I left the whole gaming behind me. But back in these days,

3:22

it was like primary Counter-Strike from early in the morning to late in the

3:27

evening, except on school days.

3:29

I see, I see. Well, for me, I was once at a LAN party with playing Counter-Strike,

3:36

but after I died more than 40 times in 30 minutes, I thought, maybe not my game.

3:44

You have built Link11 into a leader of IndeedOS Protection.

3:49

How did the initial idea come about? And what was your vision when you first started the company?

3:57

Yeah, this was actually a big coincidence. Because when we have founded the company initially,

4:03

we founded the company as a managed

4:05

service provider for low latency applications, network applications,

4:09

and server applications, which was, I would say, partially because of my passion

4:15

and history in the gaming and building these LAN parties.

4:18

But this was how it came that we have set up and managed server infrastructures

4:24

and network infrastructures in the data centers in Frankfurt.

4:27

And while operating this business, we suddenly were faced with the so-called

4:33

DDoS attacks, which have overwhelmed our network and put the whole infrastructure offline.

4:39

And this was a serious issue and we

4:43

needed to solve this issue and my co-founder Carsten Dessler

4:46

who is a world-class engineer while I'm just a

4:49

commercial guy to say so with some

4:53

technical passion he has looked

4:56

around what solutions we could implement to mitigate these

4:59

DDoS attacks which had serious effects on the availability

5:02

of our services which we have provided back in these days and he

5:06

basically can come with an idea to develop on DDoS mitigation technology by

5:11

himself leveraging his programming skills and our existing infrastructure and

5:18

the solution was such good and such capable that.

5:24

From words of mouth, other companies came to us and asked us if we could also

5:30

provide this kind of DDoS mitigation technology to them.

5:34

And as initially we only have developed it for ourselves, we find commercial

5:39

agreements with them and also then developed a user interface for our technology

5:45

that also other companies can use our service.

5:48

And this was how we came into cybersecurity. So we were affected by a cyber

5:54

attack where we didn't find any applicable solution and then have developed

6:00

our own solution to help ourselves and now millions of other assets.

6:05

I see. Most people will already know what Adidas attack is.

6:11

Can you give us a short definition? And before that, we may add to our audience,

6:17

because not everybody is aware of that we are heard globally around the world

6:21

in more than 90 countries. Frankfurt is one of the most important centers of the Internet.

6:28

We have the largest Internet node here in Frankfurt with the ECIX.

6:33

And that's one of the reasons why we do have such a lot of cloud computing all

6:38

around here, which basically laid the foundation for your business.

6:43

And now back to you with the DDoS.

6:46

Absolutely. So here in Frankfurt are all the data centers where the servers

6:50

are running. And on the servers are obviously the applications.

6:54

And the trickiest thing with the DDoS attack is that even if you have like a

6:58

world-class data center with redundancy

7:01

power, cooling, and all of these multi-million dollar investments,

7:05

you have a lot of servers in the data center, and your highly sophisticated

7:08

applications, if a data attack hits you, it basically saturates the internet

7:14

connectivity of these servers. And if your application is depending to be reachable out of the internet,

7:21

or even if it's reachable out of virtual private networks or similar things,

7:25

then such data attack will interrupt the service.

7:28

And it looks like your application is totally unavailable and offline.

7:32

And especially nowadays where everything runs 24-7, this is a serious issue

7:38

because imagine you have some high business peak days, for example,

7:43

Black Friday, for example, Valentine Day in the e-commerce space.

7:47

And then on such events, suddenly the whole online shop does not work any longer.

7:52

Nobody can access it. Nobody can place any order.

7:55

And you make like zero revenue on this day.

7:58

What were some of the most unexpected challenges you encountered early in building

8:04

your business and how did you overcome them?

8:07

Well, I would say, you know, I was lucky and grew up in a nice area with nice

8:16

friends and nice family and also some kind of moral picture and first,

8:24

When I was very surprised about what happened was when we have actually received these DDoS attacks,

8:30

because, I mean, this was somebody actively sending cyber attack to us to damage our business,

8:38

which was already quite a surprise for me back in these days,

8:42

because I never thought about that such things could happen.

8:46

And I mean, we operated the business in a good manner and everything like that.

8:50

And then somebody, and we don't even know who, because this is a tricky thing with cyber attacks.

8:54

You usually don't know who was the initiator of the cyber attacks.

8:58

Somebody has sent this attack to us, put us offline.

9:02

So this was a big surprise for me and some kind of challenge.

9:05

At the same time, very often out of challenges, you have opportunities.

9:09

And I think we use this quite well.

9:12

Another challenge and in a similar area, but unfortunately this does not bring

9:16

really like an opportunity, was when we found out that we were cheated by some former employees.

9:23

So this was really something very challenging for me also from a personal level

9:28

because I always thought about, okay, what have we done wrong?

9:31

Why were we cheated by this employee?

9:35

And this was really like a challenging time to understand this and and to navigate

9:41

through this because it totally,

9:44

is um the opposite of what i understand from uh from a mobile compass and.

9:51

I'm wondering if now your uh whole office is completely covered with cameras

9:56

except the bathrooms but that's a really different

10:00

Topic no actually not right and i mean this

10:02

is the tricky thing um just because that

10:06

thing happens to you once you should not lose trust

10:09

and um and and

10:12

and the good sign and the people right so actually we

10:14

don't have installed any camera because of that um and

10:19

and we also hope that it does not happen to us a second time um and yeah we

10:25

trust our employees there and obviously since this was like a very early experience

10:30

15 years ago and we've never had a second experience Since then,

10:35

I think we were able to make better decisions when it comes to hiring and managing

10:41

the people that such a thing would not happen again.

10:46

I would be interested for our audience if they can think of an unexpected challenge

10:51

they have faced in their startup journey.

10:54

Happy to hear your thoughts, share them with us.

10:58

Looking back now, what would you say was the biggest turning point for Link11?

11:03

What moment made you feel like you're on the right path?

11:07

Because my understanding is you had this DDoS tool and you just used it.

11:13

And then somebody popped over into your office and said, hey,

11:16

guys, your business is pretty good, but you did develop a tool there. Can I have it?

11:23

Yeah, actually, this was also like a real turning point when we have won the first clients,

11:31

but as they were still pretty small, I would say the biggest turning point was

11:38

actually not too far away from winning the first client because there were then

11:43

like nice demand from Fortune 500 organizations.

11:46

And this was really like a turning point when we were able to win our first

11:52

Fortune 500 client because it really shows, okay, this is what we have developed here.

12:01

It's like a serious, it's a serious solution for a serious problem.

12:05

And even the largest organization in this world are facing with the threat and

12:11

are challenged or have challenges for solving these issues and these problems.

12:16

So this was really like a turning point, which gave us also the confidence to

12:21

have some kind of product market fit, which was an unformular term for us back

12:25

in these days, obviously, speaking about 2010.

12:33

You've recently been recognized as one of the top 40 under 40 by Capital,

12:40

like the German equivalent of Forbes.

12:42

How does this kind of recognition impact you personally and professionally?

12:47

It has two impacts. So first impact is we are, as Link11, a kind of hidden champion,

12:57

especially cybersecurity. I mean, we serve large B2B clients. We have a strong B2B focus,

13:03

serving a very specific target audience, network administrator,

13:09

head of network CISOs, and so on. So generally speaking, if you ask in a broader audience, who is Link 11 or what

13:18

does Link 11 does, I would say the brand is not really familiar to many.

13:23

And also then if we are going into hiring, we sometimes very much need to explain

13:28

what we actually do, how is our company culture and so on.

13:32

But this 40 on the 40 award helps

13:36

us also to stand out a little bit and show about the

13:39

capabilities of the organization and and what

13:43

we have achieved so far so this really helps us in

13:46

terms of hiring and standing out

13:49

a little bit from these hit champion position and get some better visibility

13:54

to other entrepreneurs investors and also potential employees and the second

14:01

thing is when I was on my business trips in the USA and in Israel just lately,

14:08

because of the acquisition, which we have done there,

14:10

I always were very, very impressed how well all of these entrepreneurs are connected.

14:17

And when I came back to Germany, I recognized that here, it's quite the opposite.

14:25

I mean, yes, in Berlin, where we have like a nice startup scene,

14:30

there is a lot of events, a lot of connection. But if you are outside of Berlin, it's very difficult. And there was not that

14:36

many events, not that many connections.

14:40

And therefore also these 40 on the 40

14:43

about helped me because actually beside of

14:46

the award there's also I mean beside of receiving the

14:49

award for yourself you also have many other peoples there brilliant minds smart

14:54

entrepreneurs great managers who received the similar award and they really

15:00

emphasize these community of 40 on the 40 members we have our whatsapp groups

15:05

our slack channels There are many events organized.

15:09

You have peer group meetings.

15:13

You are sharing best practices and you make new friends and connections.

15:17

So this was really, really nice in terms of building a network and getting in

15:23

touch with peer group and like-minded people.

15:27

And going a little bit more into you, Maybe every entrepreneur has a set of

15:33

habits and routines that help them to stay productive.

15:38

What's one habit you swear by that had helped you in your journey?

15:42

I think one of the most important things is to keep focus because there are so many,

15:54

interesting opportunities out there so many great new ideas new technology new business models,

16:02

and so on and one of the main thing is always keep on focus on what you are doing because if you,

16:12

if you change too often if you lose the focus you will

16:15

end up nowhere so i think one

16:19

of the key routine i have

16:21

for that i mean i created some kind of dashboard or

16:25

a whiteboard where i have like the topics where

16:28

i want to focus on um we just recently implemented okr

16:33

to really thinking like a quadrual a quarter rhythm to really keep focus on

16:38

the things which actually matter and and don't lose this focus because of any

16:42

other ideas opportunities are out there and last but not least um if you if

16:50

you get into a certain age i would say so um the best the best routine uh you

16:56

could have is uh to have a supportive wife and family um so also on this receiving

17:04

having said that uh nice greetings to my wife Jessica the love of my life oh.

17:10

So sweet um that also brings me to the next question how do you balance the

17:15

demands of a growing business while maintaining a healthy work-life balance

17:20

Yeah that's a tricky one what

17:24

I read and and and learned and heard and also experience is that what many successful

17:34

founders have in common is that they are working as hell.

17:42

So, building a startup is not a part-time job, and it's also not a full-time job.

17:48

It's like an 80 to 100 hours a week job, in my opinion, right?

17:53

And what I heard from others, I mean, if you ask work-life balance coaches,

17:59

they will tell you the opposite, right?

18:02

But so, my experience is if you want to build a startup and if you really want to be successful,

18:09

we speak about 80 to 100 hours, Which basically means like you wake up,

18:13

you have a quick breakfast, and then you work on your startup until you go into bed,

18:19

sleeping, and then every day the same. Repeat this.

18:25

Work like hell, right? When there is crunch time, then really lean in.

18:30

And yes, then there are also things like sport, healthy food,

18:37

meeting with friends, building relationships, and things like that.

18:41

You know, the day only has 24 hours. And I always thought about,

18:46

hey, if others work eight hours and I would work 16 hours a day,

18:49

I could basically achieve twice the outcome.

18:54

So this was, I mean, this is where I say like basically, okay,

18:59

building a startup requires just a lot of time.

19:03

And if you speak with other successful founders and ask them about,

19:08

okay, what actually in the beginning, especially how many hours have you worked a day?

19:15

I think many would answer that it was way above 40 hours.

19:19

So work-life balance comes for me at least right after I have brought the company to a certain stage.

19:33

Currently, it's like 100% the company and nothing else.

19:43

Okay. Link11 is known for its cutting-edge technology and innovation.

19:49

How do you stay ahead of the curve in such a fast-paced and competitive industry?

19:54

Yeah, indeed. Also, not only that the technology shifts very fast,

20:00

also it's a kind of cat-and-mouse game because you have the hackers who develop

20:05

new threads and you always need to keep pace with that.

20:11

So the kind of good source for keeping pace with that is your customer base.

20:22

So our customers, as already said, we are setting to very technical people,

20:27

and they are all very great minds and a great source for ideas and inspiration.

20:35

You just need to listen very carefully to them. You need to find the time to speak with them.

20:40

You need to find the common challenges between the different individual statements

20:45

of this customer base, of these feedbacks.

20:48

But speaking to your clients is very, very often the best source of inspiration

20:56

and great business ideas.

21:00

Yes, customer-centric, I see.

21:04

For our audience, I would be curious what innovative tools or strategies have

21:09

to help you to stay ahead in your business. Share them with us.

21:15

Jens, can you walk us through a specific instance when you had to pivot or adjust

21:21

Link11's approach in response to market challenges or new cybersecurity threats?

21:27

I would say DDoS is some kind of evergreen topic.

21:33

Good and bad on the same time because if if there are new cyber threats um in our sector,

21:40

we could adopt to them and we could we could develop new solutions but ddos

21:44

is like already existing since 20 30 years and probably will exist also for

21:50

the next 20 to 30 years so we have the situation that there was not like a real

21:56

pivot need in terms of these um data solution,

22:00

what we have, right, which is type of our core business.

22:03

But while the threat of data attacks was there and is still there and also increases,

22:12

now our customers also facing other threats and other cyber attacks.

22:17

And therefore, the customers are demanding more like a platform solution instead

22:23

of a single capability solution.

22:28

And this is a kind of special situation because you know in the past it was

22:33

good enough to have the best details mitigation service,

22:38

Because customers tend to buy best in breed. But now customers want to have vendor consolidation.

22:45

They want to have a single vendor providing more solutions.

22:49

And therefore, it's super important to have multiple products.

22:52

Which was then kind of a pivot for us to get out of the dealer space and offer

22:56

a more broader service range.

23:00

And luckily, we have already anticipated this trend and made some strategic

23:05

acquisitions. So, part of the product portfolio we are now offering was developed by ourselves.

23:11

Part of the product portfolio and what we are offering was through strategic

23:15

acquisitions, which was some kind of pivotal moment for us and some kind of

23:21

change in terms of strategy.

23:25

And if you are still nowadays, I would say some kind of one trick pony,

23:31

that would be very challenging in nowadays buying behavior who really tends

23:38

to have more like a platform solution instead of an island solution.

23:43

Going a little bit into a more scaling mindset,

23:49

what do you think is the most difficult task, the most difficult aspect in scaling

23:55

a tech company and how would you advise other founders to approach it?

24:00

Three very difficult points. Hiring, hiring, hiring.

24:09

So I would say because, I mean, now we have this huge AI boom and maybe then

24:16

it changed a little bit because you need to hire less human workforce and can leverage AI.

24:24

I mean, nowadays you have companies which only have five employees and are very

24:27

successful, but generally speaking, I think hiring is one of the most challenging,

24:32

aspect of scaling a tech company because,

24:37

Well, it's usually not the big issue to have enough applications for a certain shop.

24:46

I mean, we, for example, have more than 2,000 applications just for seven open positions.

24:52

So the challenge is not to get the applications and to find the talent.

24:56

The challenge is to hire the best talent out of this pool. especially if you

25:01

are competing in a market with US competitors which usually have higher salaries

25:07

than the European counterparts. So this really become a very tricky point.

25:13

And if you hire the wrong people, you're not only using obviously money,

25:19

but you're using also a lot of time and a lot of pace.

25:25

And this is really, I would say, the most challenging part of scaling the company

25:32

and especially scaling the company very, very fast.

25:36

Actually, my next question was about hiring, building a strong team.

25:40

I would be curious, what qualities do you look for in hiring those people in order to scale?

25:50

We believe that at the end, attitude and mindset matters the most.

25:58

So basically, if you have a very well-skilled applicant, but he's lazy,

26:05

then this is not a good hire.

26:08

So better hire somebody who really works hard, who wants to achieve something,

26:13

who really leans in, because he can learn most of the things which are necessary.

26:19

And so mindset mindset is super important i would say like the single most important,

26:29

And then obviously culture fit, which also belongs somehow to a kind of mindset, right?

26:37

I mean, if we have a culture where people want to win, and where we want to

26:43

be successful, and we really lean in, and we are very supportive to each other.

26:48

We basically have the motto that when we work hard, we also work with a lot

26:53

of fun. So, this culture map or this culture match obviously needs to be achieved.

27:01

Otherwise, the higher, the new person won't feel comfortable in the environment and also vice versa.

27:12

Interesting. But as we know, culture eats strategy for breakfast. first.

27:18

I was curious because you apparently do have partnerships in Link 11 and what role did they play?

27:26

Because I read that you do have currently in one press release,

27:31

I don't know if it's up to date, 11 locations across the world.

27:34

I do believe that also works with partnerships of some kind.

27:38

And what are the most important ones and how did they work for you in order to help to scale?

27:44

Our partnerships were very long time focused on go-to-market partnerships.

27:52

So as we have developed a great solution, we only had a small amount of workforce

27:58

for selling these solutions and also only limited capabilities in terms of marketing.

28:04

So we have leveraged very, very early already partnerships from a go-to-market perspective.

28:13

So meaning finding organizations, data center providers, hosting companies,

28:20

managed service provider, consultancy organizations who help us with putting

28:26

our technology and our product to the customer base.

28:30

And while this was already the focus since quite a long, We have now also extended

28:39

this focus to look more towards OAM partnerships,

28:44

integrations, tech partnerships, to not only leveraging from a go-to-market perspective,

28:51

but also more from a product and strategic perspective, which is obviously a

28:58

different kind of tactic and also very different from each other.

29:05

But we believe if we are successful with these kind of partnerships,

29:09

this would definitely make a huge difference.

29:13

And we also believe that joining forces and achieving something together does

29:21

not only make more fun, but also generates greater outcome.

29:25

I see. We talked about cybersecurity here a lot, and it is definitely an evolving space.

29:35

I would be curious, what kind of trends are you looking for right now in a professional term?

29:45

And on a private level, I do have the tendency to always ask all my guests in

29:51

cybersecurity, on what level is your paranoia for your company and you personally

29:57

in terms of cybersecurity?

30:02

Well, which of both should I answer first?

30:08

Well, let's start with the trends. there are currently three big trends in the cybersecurity space.

30:17

And I mean, the first trend is very much in common with like in all industries.

30:23

And we're speaking about the age of AI.

30:27

So AI does not only make the companies and the workforce more efficient,

30:35

It also makes the criminals and the attackers more efficient.

30:41

So, beside of super complex phishing attacks where you have like emulated video,

30:47

voice, audio, and so on, which is super hard to detect,

30:55

You also have more and more complex AI attacks on network and application layers

31:01

using more sophisticated tactics,

31:04

more human looking traffic and approach than ever before.

31:10

Because I mean, in cybersecurity, it's always a challenge to find out,

31:13

okay, what is legit versus what is like malicious.

31:19

And the more it looks like human traffic, the more difficult it is to identify it.

31:24

So AI definitely changes the game and it also will create a lot of more cyber

31:31

attacks because with like vibe coding and so on.

31:34

And yes, currently many models block such requests, but there are also AIs out

31:41

there which don't block any malicious activity where you can ask an AI to say

31:46

like, hey, please develop me a virus. Please develop me an attack, Adidas attack program and application and similar

31:54

things. So this would just basically increase the amount of attacks and also

31:59

increase very much the sophistication of attack.

32:01

So this is trend number one, AI, which makes cyber attacks more serious and more often.

32:10

And then the second trend in cybersecurity is the so-called shift-left approach.

32:17

With shift left approach basically mean that in the past,

32:22

you had like classical development, and then you had like a DevOps team who

32:27

operating the application, and sometimes you had a network team,

32:32

and then you had somewhere at the end, the security team.

32:35

So, which means like, okay, then the security guys need to live with whatever

32:40

they receive from the development and application team and from the operating

32:44

team, and then trying to build the walls around it and fix it and make it secure.

32:51

And the shift left approach is like to put cybersecurity more towards the development

32:56

of the application and like native integrations in the applications.

33:01

And this, at the end, will hopefully lead to,

33:06

I mean, the idea is that this leads to more safer applications and not only

33:11

like patching vulnerabilities, but also avoiding vulnerabilities and creating

33:16

overall and saver environment. I hope that the AI applications, which are now generated, also has a nice security

33:27

concept already integrated. And the third big trend in cybersecurity is the so-called zero trust trend.

33:36

So zero trust means in cybersecurity, basically,

33:43

that you need to design your architecture,

33:49

your IT architecture in a way that you could not longer trust the other devices

33:57

in your network, for example. But also, you are not 100% sure if you could trust the current request and application

34:05

and also the user in front of this application.

34:10

So imagine a very, very simple kind of zero trust initiative.

34:16

Imagine you are in an office and you leave your computer, right?

34:20

Normally, you say like, yeah, no issue. I left my computer.

34:23

What should happen? All of the people here in the building are working for the

34:26

same organization. All of these people here in the building are good humans,

34:32

so nothing could happen. But Zero Trust means, for example, also that you think about,

34:38

okay, but what actually one of this person does not only has good things in mind.

34:44

So therefore, you lock your computer when you leave the desktop in your office, even.

34:51

If in the in in the early days right you

34:54

you never thought about okay somebody of your colleagues could

34:57

do some vulnerable things on your computer so this is like the zero

35:00

trust trend and it starts with like the

35:03

user it goes over application it goes over networks so

35:06

also in the past you have typically build these corporate networks by

35:10

by protecting the perimeter and you

35:13

have your DMZ the dematerialized zone

35:16

so everything within the corporate network was

35:19

trustable everything outside of the corporate network was

35:22

not trustable and the zero trust initiative basically

35:25

says like hey also everything within your network don't

35:28

trust them um have have certain

35:32

rules firewalls and so on in place because imagine if.

35:36

One device in the copper network gets hacked for whatever

35:39

reason without like having the zero

35:42

trust approach and like multiple segmentations these

35:45

this initially infection could spread

35:49

across the whole corporate network and in

35:52

the past this was the case and in the past this was also why there

35:55

was huge incidents and huge ransomware attacks and

35:59

large corporates get down for multiple days weeks and

36:02

even months and there was also some companies get bankrupt because of

36:05

that and the zero trust approach basically wants

36:09

to to mitigate all of this and saying like okay if you

36:11

get infected it does not spread around so

36:14

these are the three trends and you have

36:17

also asked me about what is my paranoid level that we have a cyber attack I

36:23

mean we have cyber attack every day on link 11 and we were able to mitigate

36:29

all of them until now and I'm also very optimistic that we are able to mitigate them in the future and.

36:37

Mitigating like hundreds of cyber techs each day. And we also have like all

36:43

of these certifications, ESO, PCI, SOC 2, we are currently working on BCI C5.

36:48

So we really invest a lot obviously as a cybersecurity company in our cybersecurity.

36:54

So my Paranite level is quite high in terms of, otherwise we would not invest

37:00

that much and would not put that much effort into it.

37:03

But my saying, my really concerns that we have an issue are quite low because

37:10

I know that we are very well protected.

37:13

That's pretty good that you guys are well protected. And I was wondering with

37:18

those cyber attacks on Link 11, if your opponents are not only training you

37:24

to be better, but that's a different topic.

37:28

I've seen a lot of interesting case studies.

37:32

What are you protecting here? For example, what I found pretty impressive is Fraport,

37:40

one of Europe's busiest airports, as well as Deutsche Flugssicherung,

37:45

which is the air navigation service provider that makes sure all flight movements,

37:52

all plane movements are secure in the German airspace.

37:55

So, can you share some particularly challenging cases and how you handle them

38:01

to provide cybersecurity for such places?

38:04

Critical aspects of cyber attacks is always the time.

38:11

So, because cyber attacks, usually the damage the cyber attacks could cause

38:15

is, or close, with the time the cyber attacks exist.

38:22

So therefore it's very very important to act super fast and reducing with that

38:31

fast response also the potential impact of a cyber attack so a quite common case is if it.

38:41

If there is a cyber attack with somebody who has not yet implemented any protection

38:45

yet, it's really like an emergency case.

38:50

So you need to imagine the company is offline.

38:54

They have invested millions in operating the business and then suddenly everything stands still.

38:59

They lose tons of money every minute this situation continues.

39:05

They don't have visibility of the business, their customers can't reach them,

39:09

they are maybe facing some damage claims because of non-availability and service interruption.

39:17

So this is a serious situation and these incidents,

39:22

these actual cyber attacks, this is always a particularly challenge,

39:32

not only for the company, but also for us.

39:35

And we have playbooks to handle the situation when customers call our emergency hotline.

39:40

It's really like the, it's like the firefighters. You call 110,

39:44

hey, link 11 here, what happened?

39:46

And then we get the information, what actually happened. Then we say like,

39:50

okay, look, this is our playbook. This is how we act.

39:53

We need to, I mean, we also need to sometimes calm down the.

39:59

How to say, to relax the people on the other side

40:02

because I mean for us it's kind of daily

40:05

business I mean luckily not every day we have

40:08

these emergency situations from unprotected customers

40:12

but we are used to it but for the other side it's like a new experience obviously

40:17

and yeah this is always interesting situation and it reminds you really like

40:23

the firefighters so hey this is the playbook this is how we solve the situation,

40:31

and this is how we can help them.

40:35

Hey guys, thanks for sticking around. The interview with Jens is actually so

40:39

extensive and running so well that we decided to split this into two parts and

40:44

we'll be back with recording number two pretty soon.

40:48

Thank you very much.

40:49

Thank you for sticking around and talk to you soon.

40:52

Talk to you soon.

40:57

That's all folks find more news streams events and interviews at www.startuprad.io

41:07

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