The Luxembourgish startup specializes in preventing social engineering related cyberattacks and helps companies detect and prevent vulnerabilities which are based on human empathy and biases.
Anti-viruses protect organizations and their computers from hacking attempts. However, cybercriminals can also gain access to their computers by approaching employees and using social engineering techniques to break their systems, including human empathy and psychological manipulation.
Aumint.io specializes in preventing social engineering related cyberattacks and helps companies detect and prevent their psychological and operational business vulnerabilities, while raising their staff’s awareness on such manipulations.
Launched in 2021 by Eran Goldman-Malka and Ido Mahler, the Luxembourg-based startup employs 7 persons.
“Ido and I were impressed by the AI’s abilities and we decided we could help companies and do something good. So, we started to transform Trident into a service that even non-technical people could also benefit from,” explains Eran Goldman-Malka, the company’s co-founder and CEO.
Together they developed Trident, a solution which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to test, monitor and simulate real life hacking techniques.
The solution is trilingual (French, English and German) and can simulate up to 200 types of attacks including phishing.
“At the first stage, Trident scans the web and identifies the attack surface of the company. It then uses machine learning technology and chooses the best simulation for each employee,” says Goldman-Malka.
“We can protect any type of company, our ways are not the traditional ways of teaching, as we rely on tradition to elaborate the future.”
Eran Goldman-Malka
Understanding human-computer relationships
“The solution executes the simulations automatically or delegates tasks – such as making a phone call or sending a physical device – to a human operator. And to close the cycle, we have a learning management system that trains the employees on the spot and increases their awareness. Simultaneously, the company constantly scans the dark web to find new attack vectors and integrate them into Trident,” says Goldman-Malka.
Aumint.io already serves Luxembourgish administrations, insurance companies and their clients by supplying enhanced attack surface scans. They are also working with law and accounting offices who hold extremely sensitive data and are committed to secrecy.
“We can protect any type of company, our ways are not the traditional ways of teaching, as we rely on tradition to elaborate the future,” explains Goldman-Malka, who also teaches cybersecurity at Lycée Guillaume Kroll.
Talking about psychological manipulation, he sees that we fundamentally misunderstand human-computer relationships.
“If someone finds a USB key, he’ll stick it into the computer. What else can he do with it?” he adds. “That’s where our constant training comes to its best power. We find those small behaviors and help employees to adopt the ‘see something, say something’ mindset,” says Golman-Malka.
When asked for practical tips Aumint.io shares with their staff, he replies: “Use your common sense. No one can do your work better than you. Unless you’re flying an airplane or in the middle of surgery, no one will die if you take two more minutes to read an email and respond to it.”
