VinaCapital Ventures, the technology investment vehicle of the VinaCapital Group, announced on October 23 its investment in Protos Labs, a Singapore-based cyber insurtech (insurance technology) company that offers cyber risk quantification solutions with a first-of-its-kind threat-based approach.
VinaCapital Ventures was one of the largest investors in the S$3 million ($2.19 million) seed round of fundraising by Protos Labs, which included other global and regional established investors.
In today’s digital age, the ever-increasing utilization and reliance on information technology and digital devices have made cyber risk a critical concern for organizations worldwide. From 2019 to 2022, the estimated monetary damages resulting from global cybercrime surged six-fold, escalating from $1.2 trillion to $7.1 trillion, underscoring the unpredictable nature of the current cyber threat landscape and the inefficiencies of existing risk management methodologies.
Mr. Trung D. Hoang, Partner at VinaCapital Ventures, noted that Vietnam is an increasingly digital economy with growing emphasis on cyber. Protos Labs’ mission is to be the innovative hub of the region’s cyber insurance sector. “With the Vietnamese Government promoting digital transformation, Protos Labs can play a part in not just improving cyber security infrastructure but also the lives of Vietnamese consumers,” he said.
The Asia-Pacific region has witnessed a surge in cyber-attacks in recent years, accounting for 31 per cent of global incidents, and within Southeast Asia, cybercrime increased by a staggering 82 per cent year-on-year in 2022, with Vietnam the third most-targeted country.
Recognizing the limitations of conventional cyber risk management approaches, Protos Labs was established in 2021 with a vision of revolutionizing cyber risk management through a data-driven and threat-based methodology. Drawing upon their expertise from overseeing cybersecurity practices at Booz Allen Hamilton, founders Mr. Joel Lee and Mr. Simeon Tan developed Nexus, a proprietary software that analyzes real-world cyber threats on a daily basis and evaluates them against an organization’s internal cyber resiliency, enabling accurate quantification of the potential damages from cyber risk.
Mr. Lee said Protos Labs is excited to partner with VinaCapital Ventures and leverage their insights to expand into Vietnam. “This investment comes at a time of accelerated growth for us, and our push to become Asia’s leading specialty cyber insurer is matched by VinaCapital’s unparalleled network in the enterprise market and its ambition to build something significant in cyberspace,” he added.
With Nexus at its core, Protos Labs offers an innovative solution for enterprises to continuously assess their cybersecurity postures in the face of a volatile cyber threat landscape and estimate their return on security investment. For cyber insurers, Protos Labs’ solution not only improves the quantification of insured cyber risk but also provides ongoing threat monitoring to reduce claim ratios.
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