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Speaker1: Hello and welcome everybody. This is Joe from StartupRate.io,
Speaker1: your startup podcast and YouTube blog from Germany.
Speaker1: Your go-to podcast for startup tech and innovations inside. Today,
Speaker1: we have a special guest, Jens Philipp Jung, CEO of Link11, a leader in DDoS
Speaker1: protection and one of the top 40 under 40 by Capital.
Speaker1: If you ever wondered how to scale a tech business or navigate the challenges
Speaker1: of cybersecurity in today's rapidly evolving market, this episode is for you.
Speaker1: Let's dive into Philipp's entrepreneurial journey, leadership lessons and innovations
Speaker1: in the cybersecurity space. Jens, welcome.
Speaker0: Hi, Jaron. Very nice to be here. Welcome, everybody.
Speaker1: Totally my pleasure. Let me spend a few words on our enabler today.
Speaker1: This recording was made possible by HTII and the Enterprise Europe Network Hessen.
Speaker1: These organizations have made tremendous contributions to helping startup businesses
Speaker1: succeed and thrive, providing a range of services from helping to find grants
Speaker1: to ongoing partnerships.
Speaker1: By taking advantage of these resources, startup companies can network and develop
Speaker1: innovative strategies for success on the international stage.
Speaker1: The dedicated support of HTNI and the Enterprise Europe Network Hessen is paramount
Speaker1: in providing startup businesses with the tools for lasting success.
Speaker1: Learn more on htii.de and en-hessen.de.
Speaker1: So now that we got that out of the way, Jens, thank you for joining us today.
Speaker1: Let's start with your journey. What sparked your interest in technology and
Speaker1: cybersecurity in the first place?
Speaker1: Have you been a juvenile hacker?
Speaker0: I wish, but unfortunately, I mainly used, when I was young, the computer for entertaining myself.
Speaker0: So I was a passionate gamer.
Speaker0: I mean, I was born in 83 and then get in touch with the first computers.
Speaker0: And yeah, instead of doing something really useful with it, I spent my time in gaming with it.
Speaker0: I would say the largest useful use of it was probably organizing LAN parties back in these days.
Speaker0: So this was also why I was already very much familiar with networks and connecting
Speaker0: computers and building these events and these infrastructure for the LAN parties back in these days,
Speaker0: long before you were able to play with a good latency online.
Speaker1: Yes, I remember those parties where you really had to physically bring your
Speaker1: computer. I even remember the time when you have those red coaxial cables and
Speaker1: need to screw them in and stuff like this.
Speaker1: Yeah, good times. And I do know a lot of our audience is about the same age rate.
Speaker1: What games did you play?
Speaker0: Oh, it was primarily Counter-Strike. I heard it's still a thing today.
Speaker0: Luckily, I left the whole gaming behind me. But back in these days,
Speaker0: it was like primary Counter-Strike from early in the morning to late in the
Speaker0: evening, except on school days.
Speaker1: I see, I see. Well, for me, I was once at a LAN party with playing Counter-Strike,
Speaker1: but after I died more than 40 times in 30 minutes, I thought, maybe not my game.
Speaker1: You have built Link11 into a leader of IndeedOS Protection.
Speaker1: How did the initial idea come about? And what was your vision when you first started the company?
Speaker0: Yeah, this was actually a big coincidence. Because when we have founded the company initially,
Speaker0: we founded the company as a managed
Speaker0: service provider for low latency applications, network applications,
Speaker0: and server applications, which was, I would say, partially because of my passion
Speaker0: and history in the gaming and building these LAN parties.
Speaker0: But this was how it came that we have set up and managed server infrastructures
Speaker0: and network infrastructures in the data centers in Frankfurt.
Speaker0: And while operating this business, we suddenly were faced with the so-called
Speaker0: DDoS attacks, which have overwhelmed our network and put the whole infrastructure offline.
Speaker0: And this was a serious issue and we
Speaker0: needed to solve this issue and my co-founder Carsten Dessler
Speaker0: who is a world-class engineer while I'm just a
Speaker0: commercial guy to say so with some
Speaker0: technical passion he has looked
Speaker0: around what solutions we could implement to mitigate these
Speaker0: DDoS attacks which had serious effects on the availability
Speaker0: of our services which we have provided back in these days and he
Speaker0: basically can come with an idea to develop on DDoS mitigation technology by
Speaker0: himself leveraging his programming skills and our existing infrastructure and
Speaker0: the solution was such good and such capable that.
Speaker0: From words of mouth, other companies came to us and asked us if we could also
Speaker0: provide this kind of DDoS mitigation technology to them.
Speaker0: And as initially we only have developed it for ourselves, we find commercial
Speaker0: agreements with them and also then developed a user interface for our technology
Speaker0: that also other companies can use our service.
Speaker0: And this was how we came into cybersecurity. So we were affected by a cyber
Speaker0: attack where we didn't find any applicable solution and then have developed
Speaker0: our own solution to help ourselves and now millions of other assets.
Speaker1: I see. Most people will already know what Adidas attack is.
Speaker1: Can you give us a short definition? And before that, we may add to our audience,
Speaker1: because not everybody is aware of that we are heard globally around the world
Speaker1: in more than 90 countries.
Speaker1: Frankfurt is one of the most important centers of the Internet.
Speaker1: We have the largest Internet node here in Frankfurt with the ECIX.
Speaker1: And that's one of the reasons why we do have such a lot of cloud computing all
Speaker1: around here, which basically laid the foundation for your business.
Speaker1: And now back to you with the DDoS.
Speaker0: Absolutely. So here in Frankfurt are all the data centers where the servers
Speaker0: are running. And on the servers are obviously the applications.
Speaker0: And the trickiest thing with the DDoS attack is that even if you have like a
Speaker0: world-class data center with redundancy
Speaker0: power, cooling, and all of these multi-million dollar investments,
Speaker0: you have a lot of servers in the data center, and your highly sophisticated
Speaker0: applications, if a data attack hits you, it basically saturates the internet
Speaker0: connectivity of these servers.
Speaker0: And if your application is depending to be reachable out of the internet,
Speaker0: or even if it's reachable out of virtual private networks or similar things,
Speaker0: then such data attack will interrupt the service.
Speaker0: And it looks like your application is totally unavailable and offline.
Speaker0: And especially nowadays where everything runs 24-7, this is a serious issue
Speaker0: because imagine you have some high business peak days, for example,
Speaker0: Black Friday, for example, Valentine Day in the e-commerce space.
Speaker0: And then on such events, suddenly the whole online shop does not work any longer.
Speaker0: Nobody can access it. Nobody can place any order.
Speaker0: And you make like zero revenue on this day.
Speaker1: What were some of the most unexpected challenges you encountered early in building
Speaker1: your business and how did you overcome them?
Speaker0: Well, I would say, you know, I was lucky and grew up in a nice area with nice
Speaker0: friends and nice family and also some kind of moral picture and first,
Speaker0: When I was very surprised about what happened was when we have actually received these DDoS attacks,
Speaker0: because, I mean, this was somebody actively sending cyber attack to us to damage our business,
Speaker0: which was already quite a surprise for me back in these days,
Speaker0: because I never thought about that such things could happen.
Speaker0: And I mean, we operated the business in a good manner and everything like that.
Speaker0: And then somebody, and we don't even know who, because this is a tricky thing with cyber attacks.
Speaker0: You usually don't know who was the initiator of the cyber attacks.
Speaker0: Somebody has sent this attack to us, put us offline.
Speaker0: So this was a big surprise for me and some kind of challenge.
Speaker0: At the same time, very often out of challenges, you have opportunities.
Speaker0: And I think we use this quite well.
Speaker0: Another challenge and in a similar area, but unfortunately this does not bring
Speaker0: really like an opportunity, was when we found out that we were cheated by some former employees.
Speaker0: So this was really something very challenging for me also from a personal level
Speaker0: because I always thought about, okay, what have we done wrong?
Speaker0: Why were we cheated by this employee?
Speaker0: And this was really like a challenging time to understand this and and to navigate
Speaker0: through this because it totally,
Speaker0: is um the opposite of what i understand from uh from a mobile compass and.
Speaker1: I'm wondering if now your uh whole office is completely covered with cameras
Speaker1: except the bathrooms but that's a really different
Speaker0: Topic no actually not right and i mean this
Speaker0: is the tricky thing um just because that
Speaker0: thing happens to you once you should not lose trust
Speaker0: and um and and
Speaker0: and the good sign and the people right so actually we
Speaker0: don't have installed any camera because of that um and
Speaker0: and we also hope that it does not happen to us a second time um and yeah we
Speaker0: trust our employees there and obviously since this was like a very early experience
Speaker0: 15 years ago and we've never had a second experience Since then,
Speaker0: I think we were able to make better decisions when it comes to hiring and managing
Speaker0: the people that such a thing would not happen again.
Speaker1: I would be interested for our audience if they can think of an unexpected challenge
Speaker1: they have faced in their startup journey.
Speaker1: Happy to hear your thoughts, share them with us.
Speaker1: Looking back now, what would you say was the biggest turning point for Link11?
Speaker1: What moment made you feel like you're on the right path?
Speaker1: Because my understanding is you had this DDoS tool and you just used it.
Speaker1: And then somebody popped over into your office and said, hey,
Speaker1: guys, your business is pretty good, but you did develop a tool there. Can I have it?
Speaker0: Yeah, actually, this was also like a real turning point when we have won the first clients,
Speaker0: but as they were still pretty small, I would say the biggest turning point was
Speaker0: actually not too far away from winning the first client because there were then
Speaker0: like nice demand from Fortune 500 organizations.
Speaker0: And this was really like a turning point when we were able to win our first
Speaker0: Fortune 500 client because it really shows, okay, this is what we have developed here.
Speaker0: It's like a serious, it's a serious solution for a serious problem.
Speaker0: And even the largest organization in this world are facing with the threat and
Speaker0: are challenged or have challenges for solving these issues and these problems.
Speaker0: So this was really like a turning point, which gave us also the confidence to
Speaker0: have some kind of product market fit, which was an unformular term for us back
Speaker0: in these days, obviously, speaking about 2010.
Speaker1: You've recently been recognized as one of the top 40 under 40 by Capital,
Speaker1: like the German equivalent of Forbes.
Speaker1: How does this kind of recognition impact you personally and professionally?
Speaker0: It has two impacts. So first impact is we are, as Link11, a kind of hidden champion,
Speaker0: especially cybersecurity.
Speaker0: I mean, we serve large B2B clients. We have a strong B2B focus,
Speaker0: serving a very specific target audience, network administrator,
Speaker0: head of network CISOs, and so on.
Speaker0: So generally speaking, if you ask in a broader audience, who is Link 11 or what
Speaker0: does Link 11 does, I would say the brand is not really familiar to many.
Speaker0: And also then if we are going into hiring, we sometimes very much need to explain
Speaker0: what we actually do, how is our company culture and so on.
Speaker0: But this 40 on the 40 award helps
Speaker0: us also to stand out a little bit and show about the
Speaker0: capabilities of the organization and and what
Speaker0: we have achieved so far so this really helps us in
Speaker0: terms of hiring and standing out
Speaker0: a little bit from these hit champion position and get some better visibility
Speaker0: to other entrepreneurs investors and also potential employees and the second
Speaker0: thing is when I was on my business trips in the USA and in Israel just lately,
Speaker0: because of the acquisition, which we have done there,
Speaker0: I always were very, very impressed how well all of these entrepreneurs are connected.
Speaker0: And when I came back to Germany, I recognized that here, it's quite the opposite.
Speaker0: I mean, yes, in Berlin, where we have like a nice startup scene,
Speaker0: there is a lot of events, a lot of connection.
Speaker0: But if you are outside of Berlin, it's very difficult. And there was not that
Speaker0: many events, not that many connections.
Speaker0: And therefore also these 40 on the 40
Speaker0: about helped me because actually beside of
Speaker0: the award there's also I mean beside of receiving the
Speaker0: award for yourself you also have many other peoples there brilliant minds smart
Speaker0: entrepreneurs great managers who received the similar award and they really
Speaker0: emphasize these community of 40 on the 40 members we have our whatsapp groups
Speaker0: our slack channels There are many events organized.
Speaker0: You have peer group meetings.
Speaker0: You are sharing best practices and you make new friends and connections.
Speaker0: So this was really, really nice in terms of building a network and getting in
Speaker0: touch with peer group and like-minded people.
Speaker1: And going a little bit more into you, Maybe every entrepreneur has a set of
Speaker1: habits and routines that help them to stay productive.
Speaker1: What's one habit you swear by that had helped you in your journey?
Speaker0: I think one of the most important things is to keep focus because there are so many,
Speaker0: interesting opportunities out there so many great new ideas new technology new business models,
Speaker0: and so on and one of the main thing is always keep on focus on what you are doing because if you,
Speaker0: if you change too often if you lose the focus you will
Speaker0: end up nowhere so i think one
Speaker0: of the key routine i have
Speaker0: for that i mean i created some kind of dashboard or
Speaker0: a whiteboard where i have like the topics where
Speaker0: i want to focus on um we just recently implemented okr
Speaker0: to really thinking like a quadrual a quarter rhythm to really keep focus on
Speaker0: the things which actually matter and and don't lose this focus because of any
Speaker0: other ideas opportunities are out there and last but not least um if you if
Speaker0: you get into a certain age i would say so um the best the best routine uh you
Speaker0: could have is uh to have a supportive wife and family um so also on this receiving
Speaker0: having said that uh nice greetings to my wife Jessica the love of my life oh.
Speaker1: So sweet um that also brings me to the next question how do you balance the
Speaker1: demands of a growing business while maintaining a healthy work-life balance
Speaker0: Yeah that's a tricky one what
Speaker0: I read and and and learned and heard and also experience is that what many successful
Speaker0: founders have in common is that they are working as hell.
Speaker0: So, building a startup is not a part-time job, and it's also not a full-time job.
Speaker0: It's like an 80 to 100 hours a week job, in my opinion, right?
Speaker0: And what I heard from others, I mean, if you ask work-life balance coaches,
Speaker0: they will tell you the opposite, right?
Speaker0: But so, my experience is if you want to build a startup and if you really want to be successful,
Speaker0: we speak about 80 to 100 hours, Which basically means like you wake up,
Speaker0: you have a quick breakfast, and then you work on your startup until you go into bed,
Speaker0: sleeping, and then every day the same. Repeat this.
Speaker0: Work like hell, right? When there is crunch time, then really lean in.
Speaker0: And yes, then there are also things like sport, healthy food,
Speaker0: meeting with friends, building relationships, and things like that.
Speaker0: You know, the day only has 24 hours. And I always thought about,
Speaker0: hey, if others work eight hours and I would work 16 hours a day,
Speaker0: I could basically achieve twice the outcome.
Speaker0: So this was, I mean, this is where I say like basically, okay,
Speaker0: building a startup requires just a lot of time.
Speaker0: And if you speak with other successful founders and ask them about,
Speaker0: okay, what actually in the beginning, especially how many hours have you worked a day?
Speaker0: I think many would answer that it was way above 40 hours.
Speaker0: So work-life balance comes for me at least right after I have brought the company to a certain stage.
Speaker0: Currently, it's like 100% the company and nothing else.
Speaker1: Okay. Link11 is known for its cutting-edge technology and innovation.
Speaker1: How do you stay ahead of the curve in such a fast-paced and competitive industry?
Speaker0: Yeah, indeed. Also, not only that the technology shifts very fast,
Speaker0: also it's a kind of cat-and-mouse game because you have the hackers who develop
Speaker0: new threads and you always need to keep pace with that.
Speaker0: So the kind of good source for keeping pace with that is your customer base.
Speaker0: So our customers, as already said, we are setting to very technical people,
Speaker0: and they are all very great minds and a great source for ideas and inspiration.
Speaker0: You just need to listen very carefully to them. You need to find the time to speak with them.
Speaker0: You need to find the common challenges between the different individual statements
Speaker0: of this customer base, of these feedbacks.
Speaker0: But speaking to your clients is very, very often the best source of inspiration
Speaker0: and great business ideas.
Speaker1: Yes, customer-centric, I see.
Speaker1: For our audience, I would be curious what innovative tools or strategies have
Speaker1: to help you to stay ahead in your business. Share them with us.
Speaker1: Jens, can you walk us through a specific instance when you had to pivot or adjust
Speaker1: Link11's approach in response to market challenges or new cybersecurity threats?
Speaker0: I would say DDoS is some kind of evergreen topic.
Speaker0: Good and bad on the same time because if if there are new cyber threats um in our sector,
Speaker0: we could adopt to them and we could we could develop new solutions but ddos
Speaker0: is like already existing since 20 30 years and probably will exist also for
Speaker0: the next 20 to 30 years so we have the situation that there was not like a real
Speaker0: pivot need in terms of these um data solution,
Speaker0: what we have, right, which is type of our core business.
Speaker0: But while the threat of data attacks was there and is still there and also increases,
Speaker0: now our customers also facing other threats and other cyber attacks.
Speaker0: And therefore, the customers are demanding more like a platform solution instead
Speaker0: of a single capability solution.
Speaker0: And this is a kind of special situation because you know in the past it was
Speaker0: good enough to have the best details mitigation service,
Speaker0: Because customers tend to buy best in breed. But now customers want to have vendor consolidation.
Speaker0: They want to have a single vendor providing more solutions.
Speaker0: And therefore, it's super important to have multiple products.
Speaker0: Which was then kind of a pivot for us to get out of the dealer space and offer
Speaker0: a more broader service range.
Speaker0: And luckily, we have already anticipated this trend and made some strategic
Speaker0: acquisitions. So, part of the product portfolio we are now offering was developed by ourselves.
Speaker0: Part of the product portfolio and what we are offering was through strategic
Speaker0: acquisitions, which was some kind of pivotal moment for us and some kind of
Speaker0: change in terms of strategy.
Speaker0: And if you are still nowadays, I would say some kind of one trick pony,
Speaker0: that would be very challenging in nowadays buying behavior who really tends
Speaker0: to have more like a platform solution instead of an island solution.
Speaker1: Going a little bit into a more scaling mindset,
Speaker1: what do you think is the most difficult task, the most difficult aspect in scaling
Speaker1: a tech company and how would you advise other founders to approach it?
Speaker0: Three very difficult points. Hiring, hiring, hiring.
Speaker0: So I would say because, I mean, now we have this huge AI boom and maybe then
Speaker0: it changed a little bit because you need to hire less human workforce and can leverage AI.
Speaker0: I mean, nowadays you have companies which only have five employees and are very
Speaker0: successful, but generally speaking, I think hiring is one of the most challenging,
Speaker0: aspect of scaling a tech company because,
Speaker0: Well, it's usually not the big issue to have enough applications for a certain shop.
Speaker0: I mean, we, for example, have more than 2,000 applications just for seven open positions.
Speaker0: So the challenge is not to get the applications and to find the talent.
Speaker0: The challenge is to hire the best talent out of this pool. especially if you
Speaker0: are competing in a market with US competitors which usually have higher salaries
Speaker0: than the European counterparts.
Speaker0: So this really become a very tricky point.
Speaker0: And if you hire the wrong people, you're not only using obviously money,
Speaker0: but you're using also a lot of time and a lot of pace.
Speaker0: And this is really, I would say, the most challenging part of scaling the company
Speaker0: and especially scaling the company very, very fast.
Speaker1: Actually, my next question was about hiring, building a strong team.
Speaker1: I would be curious, what qualities do you look for in hiring those people in order to scale?
Speaker0: We believe that at the end, attitude and mindset matters the most.
Speaker0: So basically, if you have a very well-skilled applicant, but he's lazy,
Speaker0: then this is not a good hire.
Speaker0: So better hire somebody who really works hard, who wants to achieve something,
Speaker0: who really leans in, because he can learn most of the things which are necessary.
Speaker0: And so mindset mindset is super important i would say like the single most important,
Speaker0: And then obviously culture fit, which also belongs somehow to a kind of mindset, right?
Speaker0: I mean, if we have a culture where people want to win, and where we want to
Speaker0: be successful, and we really lean in, and we are very supportive to each other.
Speaker0: We basically have the motto that when we work hard, we also work with a lot
Speaker0: of fun. So, this culture map or this culture match obviously needs to be achieved.
Speaker0: Otherwise, the higher, the new person won't feel comfortable in the environment and also vice versa.
Speaker1: Interesting. But as we know, culture eats strategy for breakfast. first.
Speaker1: I was curious because you apparently do have partnerships in Link 11 and what role did they play?
Speaker1: Because I read that you do have currently in one press release,
Speaker1: I don't know if it's up to date, 11 locations across the world.
Speaker1: I do believe that also works with partnerships of some kind.
Speaker1: And what are the most important ones and how did they work for you in order to help to scale?
Speaker0: Our partnerships were very long time focused on go-to-market partnerships.
Speaker0: So as we have developed a great solution, we only had a small amount of workforce
Speaker0: for selling these solutions and also only limited capabilities in terms of marketing.
Speaker0: So we have leveraged very, very early already partnerships from a go-to-market perspective.
Speaker0: So meaning finding organizations, data center providers, hosting companies,
Speaker0: managed service provider, consultancy organizations who help us with putting
Speaker0: our technology and our product to the customer base.
Speaker0: And while this was already the focus since quite a long, We have now also extended
Speaker0: this focus to look more towards OAM partnerships,
Speaker0: integrations, tech partnerships,
Speaker0: to not only leveraging from a go-to-market perspective,
Speaker0: but also more from a product and strategic perspective, which is obviously a
Speaker0: different kind of tactic and also very different from each other.
Speaker0: But we believe if we are successful with these kind of partnerships,
Speaker0: this would definitely make a huge difference.
Speaker0: And we also believe that joining forces and achieving something together does
Speaker0: not only make more fun, but also generates greater outcome.
Speaker1: I see. We talked about cybersecurity here a lot, and it is definitely an evolving space.
Speaker1: I would be curious, what kind of trends are you looking for right now in a professional term?
Speaker1: And on a private level, I do have the tendency to always ask all my guests in
Speaker1: cybersecurity, on what level is your paranoia for your company and you personally
Speaker1: in terms of cybersecurity?
Speaker0: Well, which of both should I answer first?
Speaker0: Well, let's start with the trends. there are currently three big trends in the cybersecurity space.
Speaker0: And I mean, the first trend is very much in common with like in all industries.
Speaker0: And we're speaking about the age of AI.
Speaker0: So AI does not only make the companies and the workforce more efficient,
Speaker0: It also makes the criminals and the attackers more efficient.
Speaker0: So, beside of super complex phishing attacks where you have like emulated video,
Speaker0: voice, audio, and so on, which is super hard to detect,
Speaker0: You also have more and more complex AI attacks on network and application layers
Speaker0: using more sophisticated tactics,
Speaker0: more human looking traffic and approach than ever before.
Speaker0: Because I mean, in cybersecurity, it's always a challenge to find out,
Speaker0: okay, what is legit versus what is like malicious.
Speaker0: And the more it looks like human traffic, the more difficult it is to identify it.
Speaker0: So AI definitely changes the game and it also will create a lot of more cyber
Speaker0: attacks because with like vibe coding and so on.
Speaker0: And yes, currently many models block such requests, but there are also AIs out
Speaker0: there which don't block any malicious activity where you can ask an AI to say
Speaker0: like, hey, please develop me a virus.
Speaker0: Please develop me an attack, Adidas attack program and application and similar
Speaker0: things. So this would just basically increase the amount of attacks and also
Speaker0: increase very much the sophistication of attack.
Speaker0: So this is trend number one, AI, which makes cyber attacks more serious and more often.
Speaker0: And then the second trend in cybersecurity is the so-called shift-left approach.
Speaker0: With shift left approach basically mean that in the past,
Speaker0: you had like classical development, and then you had like a DevOps team who
Speaker0: operating the application, and sometimes you had a network team,
Speaker0: and then you had somewhere at the end, the security team.
Speaker0: So, which means like, okay, then the security guys need to live with whatever
Speaker0: they receive from the development and application team and from the operating
Speaker0: team, and then trying to build the walls around it and fix it and make it secure.
Speaker0: And the shift left approach is like to put cybersecurity more towards the development
Speaker0: of the application and like native integrations in the applications.
Speaker0: And this, at the end, will hopefully lead to,
Speaker0: I mean, the idea is that this leads to more safer applications and not only
Speaker0: like patching vulnerabilities, but also avoiding vulnerabilities and creating
Speaker0: overall and saver environment.
Speaker0: I hope that the AI applications, which are now generated, also has a nice security
Speaker0: concept already integrated.
Speaker0: And the third big trend in cybersecurity is the so-called zero trust trend.
Speaker0: So zero trust means in cybersecurity, basically,
Speaker0: that you need to design your architecture,
Speaker0: your IT architecture in a way that you could not longer trust the other devices
Speaker0: in your network, for example.
Speaker0: But also, you are not 100% sure if you could trust the current request and application
Speaker0: and also the user in front of this application.
Speaker0: So imagine a very, very simple kind of zero trust initiative.
Speaker0: Imagine you are in an office and you leave your computer, right?
Speaker0: Normally, you say like, yeah, no issue. I left my computer.
Speaker0: What should happen? All of the people here in the building are working for the
Speaker0: same organization. All of these people here in the building are good humans,
Speaker0: so nothing could happen.
Speaker0: But Zero Trust means, for example, also that you think about,
Speaker0: okay, but what actually one of this person does not only has good things in mind.
Speaker0: So therefore, you lock your computer when you leave the desktop in your office, even.
Speaker0: If in the in in the early days right you
Speaker0: you never thought about okay somebody of your colleagues could
Speaker0: do some vulnerable things on your computer so this is like the zero
Speaker0: trust trend and it starts with like the
Speaker0: user it goes over application it goes over networks so
Speaker0: also in the past you have typically build these corporate networks by
Speaker0: by protecting the perimeter and you
Speaker0: have your DMZ the dematerialized zone
Speaker0: so everything within the corporate network was
Speaker0: trustable everything outside of the corporate network was
Speaker0: not trustable and the zero trust initiative basically
Speaker0: says like hey also everything within your network don't
Speaker0: trust them um have have certain
Speaker0: rules firewalls and so on in place because imagine if.
Speaker0: One device in the copper network gets hacked for whatever
Speaker0: reason without like having the zero
Speaker0: trust approach and like multiple segmentations these
Speaker0: this initially infection could spread
Speaker0: across the whole corporate network and in
Speaker0: the past this was the case and in the past this was also why there
Speaker0: was huge incidents and huge ransomware attacks and
Speaker0: large corporates get down for multiple days weeks and
Speaker0: even months and there was also some companies get bankrupt because of
Speaker0: that and the zero trust approach basically wants
Speaker0: to to mitigate all of this and saying like okay if you
Speaker0: get infected it does not spread around so
Speaker0: these are the three trends and you have
Speaker0: also asked me about what is my paranoid level that we have a cyber attack I
Speaker0: mean we have cyber attack every day on link 11 and we were able to mitigate
Speaker0: all of them until now and I'm also very optimistic that we are able to mitigate them in the future and.
Speaker0: Mitigating like hundreds of cyber techs each day. And we also have like all
Speaker0: of these certifications, ESO, PCI, SOC 2, we are currently working on BCI C5.
Speaker0: So we really invest a lot obviously as a cybersecurity company in our cybersecurity.
Speaker0: So my Paranite level is quite high in terms of, otherwise we would not invest
Speaker0: that much and would not put that much effort into it.
Speaker0: But my saying, my really concerns that we have an issue are quite low because
Speaker0: I know that we are very well protected.
Speaker1: That's pretty good that you guys are well protected. And I was wondering with
Speaker1: those cyber attacks on Link 11, if your opponents are not only training you
Speaker1: to be better, but that's a different topic.
Speaker1: I've seen a lot of interesting case studies.
Speaker1: What are you protecting here? For example, what I found pretty impressive is Fraport,
Speaker1: one of Europe's busiest airports, as well as Deutsche Flugssicherung,
Speaker1: which is the air navigation service provider that makes sure all flight movements,
Speaker1: all plane movements are secure in the German airspace.
Speaker1: So, can you share some particularly challenging cases and how you handle them
Speaker1: to provide cybersecurity for such places?
Speaker0: Critical aspects of cyber attacks is always the time.
Speaker0: So, because cyber attacks, usually the damage the cyber attacks could cause
Speaker0: is, or close, with the time the cyber attacks exist.
Speaker0: So therefore it's very very important to act super fast and reducing with that
Speaker0: fast response also the potential impact of a cyber attack so a quite common case is if it.
Speaker0: If there is a cyber attack with somebody who has not yet implemented any protection
Speaker0: yet, it's really like an emergency case.
Speaker0: So you need to imagine the company is offline.
Speaker0: They have invested millions in operating the business and then suddenly everything stands still.
Speaker0: They lose tons of money every minute this situation continues.
Speaker0: They don't have visibility of the business, their customers can't reach them,
Speaker0: they are maybe facing some damage claims because of non-availability and service interruption.
Speaker0: So this is a serious situation and these incidents,
Speaker0: these actual cyber attacks, this is always a particularly challenge,
Speaker0: not only for the company, but also for us.
Speaker0: And we have playbooks to handle the situation when customers call our emergency hotline.
Speaker0: It's really like the, it's like the firefighters. You call 110,
Speaker0: hey, link 11 here, what happened?
Speaker0: And then we get the information, what actually happened. Then we say like,
Speaker0: okay, look, this is our playbook. This is how we act.
Speaker0: We need to, I mean, we also need to sometimes calm down the.
Speaker0: How to say, to relax the people on the other side
Speaker0: because I mean for us it's kind of daily
Speaker0: business I mean luckily not every day we have
Speaker0: these emergency situations from unprotected customers
Speaker0: but we are used to it but for the other side it's like a new experience obviously
Speaker0: and yeah this is always interesting situation and it reminds you really like
Speaker0: the firefighters so hey this is the playbook this is how we solve the situation,
Speaker0: and this is how we can help them.
Speaker1: Hey guys, thanks for sticking around. The interview with Jens is actually so
Speaker1: extensive and running so well that we decided to split this into two parts and
Speaker1: we'll be back with recording number two pretty soon.
Speaker0: Thank you very much.
Speaker1: Thank you for sticking around and talk to you soon.
Speaker0: Talk to you soon.
Speaker1: That's all folks find more news streams events and interviews at www.startuprad.io
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