B-Hive’s Trusted Fintech Program kicks off today with an introduction day in Brussels. Ten start-ups have decided to join the program in order to understand the ins and outs of cyber security while aiming to receive the valuable Trusted Fintech Label. The completion of the program will not only result in earning the label, but it will also showcase their commitment to better the company’s cybersecurity procedures.

B-Hive launched the program two months ago, during Digital Finance Europe, to encourage start-ups and scale-ups to put more focus on security. The ten start-ups that chose to take part in the program include Billit, BrightAnalytics, Digiteal (Teal IT), Elimity, Features Analytics, Gambit Financial Solutions, Investsuite, Linearity, NGdata Europe and NGRAVE.io.

Christian Bettendorf, sales manager at Digiteal is excited to be a part of the program: "Digiteal is certified by the National Bank of Belgium as payment institution so, as you can imagine, it implies a very high-security level. However, we appreciate to be permanently challenged in order to continuously improve our services and stay up to date. For our customers, for their customers, for us, TRUST is one of the most important values. We are therefore really glad of the opportunity provided by B-Hive to be a part of the program!"

The program lasts for three months and will focus on five different modules – the fundamentals of cybersecurity, regulation and certification, incident and data breach management, third-party vendor risk and secure technology. Throughout the program, 12 of B-hive’s community partners will bring in their expertise and educate the participants on each topic.

Among them is Digitribe. Commenting on the importance of cybersecurity and why Digitribe wanted to be a part of the program is their Managing Director, François Lecocq: “One of the CyberSecurity services that Digitribe provides to the Financial Services industry is to help them assess the security maturity of their suppliers and inherent risk of using them against a number of frameworks and best practices. We’ve noticed that there is still a big gap in readiness when those suppliers are tech start-ups or scale-ups. The Trusted Fintech program creates a win-win for everyone, which is why were immediately convinced that we had to join as a content provider.”

On top of the training, the participating companies also receive a vulnerability assessment among others: “Whether you’re ready or not, hackers can and will test your security at any given moment. This is why external security assessments are so important: they provide a realistic view of how hackers can get in and what they are able to do.”, said Stijn Jans, founder of Intigriti.

The main objectives of the program are to encourage start-ups to look at security from the get-go and create a collective responsibility in their rapidly-growing organizations. Patrick Coomans is certain that security should be embedded in the DNA of every software company from day one. “When you read about data breaches, most of the companies impacted have two things in common: 1. They have plenty of security certifications, and 2. They consider those certifications as a compliance tick-in-the-box only. Safeguarding customer information is about the right mentality, a common responsibility, a mindset of continuous compliance and security by design, not another certificate.”