New School Security Awareness Training Enables European Businesses to Effectively Combat Ransomware, CEO Fraud and Other Malicious Threats

Understanding the only way an organisation can be safe from phishing is to make sure end-users are educated, KnowBe4 is formally bringing its new school security awareness training to Europe, with an established beach head in the U.K. The provider of the world’s most popular platform for security awareness training and simulated phishing attacks, offers its services throughout Europe via a network of security-focused VARs and MSPs.

As attacks such as ransomware and CEO fraud continue to severely disrupt small and large organisations around the globe, KnowBe4 continues to innovate and develop effective ways to turn employees into a “‘human firewall” that can recognise and avoid cyber threats, thereby reducing organisational risk and protecting company assets.

Earlier this year KnowBe4 issued the The 2017 Endpoint Protection Ransomware Effectiveness Report, which found that endpoint security products are providing a false sense of security with regard to ransomware. Thirty three percent of respondents had experienced a ransomware attack in the past 12 months, despite the fact that more than half of them (53 per cent) had deployed multiple endpoint solutions to protect against the malware. Yet, respondents that combined online security awareness training with frequent phishing attack testing saw the lowest percentage (21 per cent) of successful ransomware attacks.

“Ransomware is a runaway train for global businesses of all sizes and it’s only one of many threats that a well-trained and tested organisation can prevent,” said Stu Sjouwerman, CEO of KnowBe4. “We’re able to expand to Europe because businesses know that our new-school approach to security awareness training can help them educate their users to avoid cyber threats, reducing their corporate risk in the process. We are working with a growing and very talented pool of distributors and managed service providers to bring KnowBe4 to businesses throughout Europe.”

KnowBe4 last week announced its Q3 2017 results,sales were 2.63X greater than Q3 2016.  Q3 2017 marked the 18^th-straight quarter of growth, driven by an increasing enterprise demand for its new-school approach to security awareness training. KnowBe4 is putting an emphasis on growth within the European market, especially the UK, as the European region has grown at 250 per cent year on year during calendar year 2017. Within the U.K. specifically, KnowBe4 plans to triple its number of employees, double its number of partners and count more than 10 per cent of overall company revenue coming from the country by the end of 2018.

“We know just how daunting a task it can be to keep an organisation secure. The relentless push by cyber criminals and the potential harm from ransomware, phishing attacks, CEO fraud, and other forms of social engineering can be substantial, costing billions of dollars, “said Perry Carpenter, Chief Evangelist and Strategy Officer at KnowBe4. “We want to help CISOs and IT Managers reduce the human error within their organisation, thus reducing their social engineering attack surface. The tools we’ve built quickly and easily determine the weakest links within an organisation by providing engaging security awareness training and deploying simulated phishing attacks to their employee base.”

Since the start of 2017, KnowBe4 has expanded its partner program by 250 percent, more than doubling its channel partners.

“Perimeter security solutions, which used to protect users even when they clicked the wrong link, no longer work on their own. It’s critical that employees train and support their entire workforce, which, until now, was a daunting and commonly unsuccessful task,” said Ian Kilpatrick, EVP Cyber Security for Nuvias Group, KnowBe4’s value-added distributor in the U.K. “KnowBe4 is able to automate the task of training and testing employees so a company’s workforce can thwart social engineering-based attacks like phishing and ransomware. KnowBe4 has been a very good partner and one that has helped us serve our client base well.”

“Ransomware, CEO fraud and other types of attacks are on the increase and are a real risk to the future of businesses, even though they are often preventable. People let these threats in, so we wanted a partner that could help educate users and make these attacks less successful,” said Tony Mason, director at Security Software Solutions, a KnowBe4 Premier Solution Delivery Partner. “KnowBe4’s combination of Security Awareness Training and simulated phishing tests are intuitive, effective and empower our customers to take back control of their biggest security risk – their staff.”

For more information about working with KnowBe4 or to inquire about partnering with the company, please visit: https://www.knowbe4.com/partnering.