Cybersecurity Startup Futurae's CEO Sandra Tobler About Building an International Network

02.03.2020 11:00, Guillaume Tinsel

The startup and innovation ecosystem has offered what more and more highly qualified people are looking for: self-determination, meaningful work, steep learning curves, and crazy adventures. We have talked with Sandra Tobler, CEO of the Swiss cybersecurity startup Futurae about life as an entrepreneur.

Half of the startups in the top 10 of 2019's TOP 100 Swiss Startup Awards employ more than 50 people. Climbing the corporate ladder seems to be a less and less attractive option for members of Generation Y. What’s more appealing is the prospect of reaching a goal with like-minded people, making a difference and having a positive impact in the world. The innovation ecosystem offers ideal conditions. The limits of technology shift daily, markets are literally limitless, and a growing number of big companies and investors now rely on tech startups. Low entry-level wages and office furniture from Ikea? No problem. What matters more is the prospect of an adventure journey that offers new challenges at every turn.

Sandra Tobler - The Networker
Each year 100 investors and experts choose the most promising Swiss startups. The result is the TOP 100 Swiss Startup Ranking. Futurae Technologies was listed in the TOP 100 Swiss Startup Ranking 2018 and 2019. Passwords are unsecure and other options awkward to use. Futurae has developed a new method fo secure login that, inter alia, relies on ambient noise to identify the user. The market entry is successful; now the company wants to grow through expansion and further collaboration.

To date, people in 18 countries use Futurae’s two-phase authentication solutions. Many do not even notice it – and that’s how it should be. “We combine user-friendliness and security,” says CEO Sandra Tobler. The one-and zero-touch technologies were designed by her co-founders Claudio Marforio and Nikos Karapanos at ETH Zurich’s System Security Group. Tobler knew the two privately: “They had been researching user-friendly security applications for years, and wanted to make a product from it.” Since then, Tobler has been a young entrepreneur.

She has always been interested in IT: immediately after studying international relations in Geneva, she moved to IBM. She did practically everything there: she was responsible for international clients and contract negotiations and worked in project and change management. “It was a great time,” she says. But after five years she had had enough and joined the Swiss internationalisation agency S-GE,  where her job was to build a platform for the Swiss ICT industry. More recently, she lived in San Francisco for two years, where she brought representatives of business and politics together with Switzerland’s Federal Department of Foreign Affairs.

“Over the years, I have built up an international network,” says Tobler. This network is now used for Futurae. The company is growing, and customers come from industries with high requirements from IT security: the financial and insurance sectors and healthcare. Corporates such as the stock exchange operator SIX and the Aduno Group obtain access control to their IT systems as Software-as-a-Service, which has been on the market for only two years.

Tobler says she is an extremely curious person – the unknown excites her. With Futurae, she is in the right place because no one can say where digitisation and the expansion of the Internet of Things will lead. Only one thing, she says, is certain: “The more applications and processes that are digitised, the more user interfaces are created. They all need simple and secure access controls.”

This article by Jost Dubacher with illustrations by Bianca Litscher was first published in the TOP 100 Swiss Startup Magazine 2019. TOP 100 is the de facto yearly listing reference acting as radar and monitor for Swiss and international investors, corporates, media and the startup ecosystem. For the awarded startups it’s a quality label and brings credibility for fundraising and business development. The magazine is distributed throughout the year at strategic locations within the startup ecosystem, events and on www.top100startups.swiss. The upcoming TOP 100 Swiss Startup Award will take place on September 9th, 2020.



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