15 Feb Testimonial: Elmar Eperiesi-Beck Founder & CEO at eperi GmbH
Elmar Eperiesi-Beck, Founder & CEO at eperi GmbH
“EUROPE NEEDS A VOICE AGAINST GAFAM
While GAFAM (Google (Alphabet), Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft) products, solutions and views are omnipresent throughout European media, the European counterparts do not have a voice. The reason for this is certainly not the lack of ideas or the quality of the products – there are numerous European companies with highly innovative ideas and products. But their voices are simply not loud enough to overtone the multi-million-dollar marketing machinery of GAFAM.
At the same time, European (cybersecurity) companies have an USP that has been widely underestimated, yet. The GDPR and the European Data Protection laws are not a burden – they are a tremendous USP! European companies need to change their perspectives and see secure employee and customer data as competitive advantage.
Companies need to be educated not to believe the wrong (and political motivated) statements of GAFAM. They do promote e.g. that encryption on cloud-provider side leads to GDPR compliant data storage in the cloud. It does not! Because the one who encrypts the data, needs to access to the unencrypted data at some point of time. In terms of the GDPR, this represents an indisputable contradiction.
As soon as companies start to question GAFAM and look around the European market, they will very quickly realize that there are many European (cybersecurity) companies with creative and innovative solutions that GAFAM will never be able to offer.
COLLABORATION IS THE KEY
Now we have complained long enough about the apparent omnipotence of GAFAM. We need solutions!
Companies need affordable, uncomplicated and solution-oriented offers – and if possible, from a single source. Many companies are still not aware of the effects that the tilted Privacy Shield (Schrems II judgement) and the GDPR can have on the company and its management in case of a data breach. They must be educated about cybersecurity.
Collaboration is the key! One single European cybersecurity company may not have the marketing power to beat GAFAM. But what power would a merger of European cybersecurity companies with a broad range of complementary security products have? Not only could they bundle their marketing efforts, they would also be able to exchange and learn from each other.
And that is exactly what the European Champions Alliance enables with their Cybersecurity Mapping. It creates a European view and answer to the strong position of foreign countries – like “America first”.
VISIBILITY IS THE RESULT
By joint cybersecurity offerings, companies will be able to find solutions that are exactly tailored to their individual needs and are no longer confused by general messages like “Stop Hackers!”.
The result of collaborated efforts by European cybersecurity companies will be a landscape of educated customers that are aware of the legal requirements of GDPR and the “state of the art” solutions on the European market.
WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF DIFFERENT MARKET PLAYERS?
For customers a market diversity with different solutions for different requirements has many advantages. What we know from biology can also be applied to the market economy. If there are several participants on the market, a kind of “Darwinian selection process” is automatically activated. This leads to the fact that only the best offers on the market can survive.
Furthermore, the well-known disadvantages of monopolies are prevented by a diverse market. Restrictive contracts and outrageous pricing are prevented, as is the customer’s dependence on the supplier.”
