August 10, 2021 (Cambridge, UK) - PORGiESOFT, an EdTech startup based in Cambridge today announced has been selected by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) – part of GCHQ – as one of the first five innovators to join its newly launched NCSC For Startups programme, run in collaboration with innovation partner Plexal.

The programme connects promising startups with NCSC and GCHQ experts to co-develop solutions addressing some of the UK’s most pressing security challenges. It is the successor to the Cyber Accelerator, which helped over 40 companies raise more than £100m in external investment.

PORGiESOFT is tackling the growing global problem of cyber-enabled fraud, which costs billions annually and has significantly increased during the pandemic. Its flagship platform, SenseText™, has been described as “the Grammarly for cyber fraud detection” — an accessible assistant that provides enterprise employees and consumers with a second opinion on suspicious emails and text messages by generating an explainable fraud risk score.

“Enterprise employees continue to fall for genuine-looking Business Email Compromise (BEC) emails that bypass spam filters and smishing texts, leading to huge financial losses. Losses to email-driven fraud was more than £2.5 Billion  in 2019, the average amount lost during a BEC attack in 2020 was around £58k while cybersecurity complaints have climbed 400% since the COVID-19 pandemic,” said George Brown, CEO (Founder) of PORGiESOFT. “Our mission is to make fraud detection accessible, intuitive, and explainable — giving every employee and citizen the ability to check suspicious messages within seconds. Joining NCSC For Startups gives us access to world-class expertise and industry partnerships to scale that vision.”

As part of the programme, PORGiESOFT will focus on:

• • Improving real-time fraud detection for both emails and text messages.

  • Enhancing threat intelligence by learning from fraud cases across industries.

  • Developing customer-focused solutions, drawing on insights into how employees and citizens experience fraud risk.

  • Strengthening product security by adopting NCSC best practices in secure coding and architecture

    
    

The company joins fellow innovators Exalens, Enclave, Meterian, and Rebellion Defence in the first NCSC For Startups cohort, addressing threats ranging from fraud and ransomware to open-source risk and Zero Trust networking.

Chris Ensor, NCSC Deputy Director for Cyber Growth, commented: “The UK has a thriving cyber security industry and I’m excited to get to work with our first five companies and bring their innovations to life. Finding great ideas that can help protect all areas of society is a key part of our mission and we look forward to collaborating with more startups as the programme rolls on.”

ABOUT NATIONAL CYBER SECURITY CENTRE (NCSC) - www.ncsc.gov.uk

Since 2016, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has safeguarded the UK’s critical systems and online services, delivering world-leading guidance, tools and frameworksfor business and citizens alike. When cyber attacks occur – or services are disrupted – we provide incident responseto minimise harm, restore operations, and help organisations get back on their feet. The NCSC was formed by combining separate parts of government, MI5 and GCHQ to create the National Technical Authority for cyber security. We lead the UK’s defence against the most advanced cyber threats, including those from nation states, hackers, and cyber criminals.

The NCSC works closely with international allies, law enforcement and the UK’s intelligence and security agencies to ensure we understand the cyber threat, and how we can defend against it. We also harness talent across schools, universities, and the tech community, driving researchinto emerging technologies to explore new ways to reduce harm at scale. At the same time, we are investing in the UK’s national security by nurturing the next generation of expertise that the expanding cyber security sector needs to thrive.

ABOUT PORGiESOFT

PORGiESOFT is on a mission to modernise learning, teaching and fraud detection, we are doing this by introducing 21st-century learning and teaching and leveraging AI in cyber-fraud detection. We are an EdTech startup based in Cambridge, but we pivoted to cybersecurity in 2020. We were founded in 2018. We produce unique explainable cyber-fraud insights to help businesses, customers and employees stay safe from fraud and scams.