Campus Cyber will open its doors in February. We at Mindflow are proud and excited to participate in this new adventure.

Indeed, the folks at Cyber Booster, a startup studio part of Campus Cyber, have selected us as one of the first companies to join Cyber Booster.

As the number of cyberattacks and their consequences rises, we need to find new solutions and innovations for big and small companies. Public institutions are trying to foster excellence and innovation in cybersecurity to counter these rising trends.

In this field, Israel is considered a prime example. Back in the 90s, leaders decided that technology would be the main asset Israel should develop to defend itself in a hostile, close environment. As a result, connections were made between the military, universities, and the public sector early on. Innovations were fostered in universities and tested in the field. Years after, former soldiers brought them to the private sector. For instance, let's look at how many former soldiers and members of technical units are now leading functions in private companies.

In the mid-2010s, a new initiative arose to address Israel's rising cybersecurity challenges. Note that even at that time, according to Michael Eisenstadt and David Pollock, Israel faced approximately 1000 attacks every minute. If Israel's offensive capabilities were already far ahead and implemented in direct military activities (operation Orchard, for instance), its defense capabilities would still be limited. This is one of the factors that presided over the creation of CyberSpark in 2014.

Based on a closely intertwined collaboration between the Government, the Industry, the Academia, and the Military, CyberSpark, located in Beer Sheva in the Negev Desert, was, from the start, aimed at becoming the cybersecurity world capital.

Eight years later, Beer Sheva is a vibrant center, startups are shining by the dozens, and significant digital companies are taking offices in the town to be as close as possible to the epicenter.

Cybersecurity has also become one of the top priorities for almost every state globally. Thus, many of them are designing projects like CyberSpark to foster a new dynamic: the USA with Cyber NYC, China with parks dedicated in Beijing and Wuhan, Russia, and Skolkovo technology park close to Moscow, the UK with East London Tech City.

In France, the Government and other public and private entities took the initiative to launch a Campus to gather together startups, industry, and academia in 2019, namely the Campus Cyber. The Cyber Booster was incorporated after the project won a call before the Government bodies.

Campus Cyber

According to the project's initiators, two main obstacles must be overcome to face the present and future challenges of cybersecurity.

First, we must rely more on automation, from deployment to everyday operations. The goal is to lower the skills barrier to operate these tools as much as possible. This will address the structural lack of workforce and adequate skills in the cybersecurity field. Then, the innovation will be generalized to the broader market and adopted.

Campus Cyber is designed to provide the best environment to foster private creativity about public entities and academia to meet those needs. Even though the problem is widely shared among European countries, France is the only country that has initiated a project 100% dedicated to cybersecurity. As Europe still lacks a unified entry point for cybersecurity, Campus Cyber might be a good start as it aims to replicate what CyberSpark has done in Israel, where cybersecurity startups raised $8.84B in 2021, a solid chunk of global cybersecurity's investment that year.

Cyber Booster

The Cyber Booster is an answer to the Grand défi de la cybersécurité to increase the resiliency of our systems to cyberattacks. It's a public-financed program launched as part of the Cybersecurity National Strategy that the French Government created to answer the rising cybersecurity challenge.

This initiative is backed by several public institutions, such as the ANSSI or the General Department of Armaments. It aims to create a startup studio dedicated to selecting promising projects and fostering them, with the goal of financing 50 startups that can achieve unicorn status in 5 years.

Many entrepreneurs will advise the selected startups, such as Thierry Rouquet (Arkoon and Sentryo), Yassir Kazar (Yogosha), or Hassan Triqui (Secure-IC).

Mindflow x Campus Cyber

Mindflow was selected to be one of the two first startups to join the Cyber Booster in February 2022, thanks to its vision of cybersecurity and the potential of its product.

By combining the Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) and the No-code experience, Mindflow aims to provide all the means to automation for companies, no matter their size and expertise in the cybersecurity field. This answers the exact needs formulated by the Government and the broader world of cybersecurity, as we've developed in former articles like talent shortages or the need for automation.

Being there will help us grow even faster, immersed with companies working in the same field, sharing the same goals of making cyberspace safer and accessible to everyone. We'll also be advised by people who succeeded and backed by public institutions, academia, and investors eager to finance promising projects.