Manchester entrepreneur invests in anti-phishing start-up

Launched this year, Manchester startup, Purplephish helps organisations address the growing challenge of cyber security, shifting corporate focus to crime prevention rather than post-crime detection and its costly aftermath.

Combatting what is now recognised as one of the biggest threats to business, Purplephish provides software-based security awareness training and a simulated phishing platform, allowing business to roll-out real-world scenarios among their staff base, preventing cyber-attacks.

Purplephish’s developers have designed and built the solution using Salesforce, enabling the creation of a user-friendly interface with easy organisational roll-out, simulating phishing attacks and providing organisations with actionable intelligence on their susceptibility to incidents, reducing their vulnerability.

Using its simulate, evaluate, educate, calibrate methodology, businesses can test employees’ susceptibility to cyber threats, discover the areas of exposure, educate through interactive training modules, and monitor over time, while pitting performance against industry peers.

The team has focused time and energy not only on the software and its scalability, but also on educational materials.

In the fight against cyber crime, the market is seeing significant investment as well as consolidation, demonstrating the importance and growth in the space. Competitors Cofense (formerly Pishme) and Wombat have recently been involved in M&A activity, $400M and $225M respectively, while KnowBe4 has attracted $43.5M investment.

Paul Kenyon, entrepreneur and Purplephish investor, said: “Cyber security is a rising challenge for UK businesses and will be a huge growth area over the coming years.

“With high profile cyber-attacks crippling organisations, such as the Wannacry attack on the NHS last year, the scale of the threat is clear. Human error and lack of education has been pinpointed in a number of studies, with 80% of businesses not addressing cyber training within their employee base. We see a clear opportunity to work with organisations of all sizes, helping them strengthen their approach to such business challenges.

“I firmly believe Purplephish can help shape this market, differentiated by their leading edge technology and unique approach taken to educating end users.”