During the worldwide cyber-security sensibilization month, the anti-hacker technology developed by the Turin-based innovative company Ermes Cyber Security wins the 16th edition of the Italian Master Startup Award (IMSA), sponsored by the Italian Association of University incubators (PNICube) and organized alongside with the Innovative Companies Incubator of Politecnico di Torino (I3P), within the Italian Tech Week framework.
The Award is aimed at the hi-tech companies rising from academic research which achieved the best market performance within 3/5 years since their establishing. In particular, the Jury wanted to recognize the advanced technological competences and the university spin-off’s outstanding business capabilities. Eight finalists competed to earn the first place of the podium, with its cash prize (co-financed by I3P) and the possibility to get in touch with bigger companies and venture capital funds.
Moreover, AIKO got an honourable mention from the Jury: the deep tech start-up, founded in I3P, developes AI solutions and software to automatize space missions, and is currently making a difference for the Italian rise in a key sector for the country’s competitiveness and economy.
“IMSA 2022 edition stood out for the attending companies’ high-quality ideas, whose results in terms of industrial and market development show the importance of technologic transfers’ paths, arising from academic research, in order to create new innovative entrepreneurial realities”, said Alessandro Grandi, President of PNICube.
“The winning company, Ermes, a Politecnico di Torino spin-off”, continued Giuseppe Scellato, President of I3P, “managed to launch on the market several innovative solutions, patented in the cyber-security field, with a relevant impact on the companies adopting them”.
The winning company
Ermes Intelligent Web Protection was founded in 2017 by Hassan Metwalley, Stefano Traverso and Marco Mellia, all of which are cyber-security experts and AI researchers. Ermes offers protection to companies thanks to its patented algorithms, reducing by 99% the exposure to web menaces and informatic attacks compared with the other main solutions already available on the market. Ermes’ innovative technology value proposition relies on the protection paradigm shift, moving from a centralized approach at network level to a distributed approach: it is a B2B on-device solution that protects the employees online web navigation in real time, reducing the menace exposition time window from days to hours. Ermes has been selected by Gartner (the informatic research global leader) as the sole Italian company within the top 100 in the cyber-security field, it owns over 10 proprietary AI methodologies, and it is able to analyse +10M websites daily.
“It is an honour for us to receive this prize, which surely represents the value of the journey begun inside the Politecnico di Torino’s research labs”, stated the CEO and Co-Founder Hassan Metwalley. “Regardless, we’re aware that the award it’s just a step for our growth route, which places becoming a worldwide landmark as a mandatory goal”.
The Italian start-up scenario
The results of the IMSA 2022 Award confirm the trends
underlined by a recent report from the Italian Ministry of Economic Development. As of July 1st, 2022, there were 14,621 innovative start-ups in Italy, being the
3.7% of all recently established businesses. The most impactful activities were
related to software production, IT consulting, R&D, machinery
manufacturing, and electronic products. The trend of innovative start-ups founded by
under 35 is growing by +0.5%, for a grand total of 17.4%.