Cyber Security District

What if your infrastructure was built secure from minute one and stayed that way?

In this special one year anniversary episode of Cyber Security District, host Jeroen Prinse sits back down with Mahdi Abdulrazak (CEO) and Kim van Lavieren (CTO) of Dawnguard, a security automation platform that turns approved security architecture directly into deployable cloud infrastructure as code.

One year in, having just closed a pre-seed round and raised €6.3 million in total funding and opening a new office in New York, Dawnguard is making a bold bet: that the only real answer to modern cyber threats isn't better detection or faster patching, it's building systems that are resilient by design from the very start.

Mahdi and Kim have both led security teams inside large organisations and lived through the same recurring nightmare: architecture locked in too early, security reviews arriving too late and a list of 50 findings that nobody has time to fix before the product ships. Dawnguard was built to break that cycle, with a collaborative canvas that lets teams design, validate and deploy secure infrastructure in minutes, with continuous drift detection to make sure it stays that way.

One year on, we look back at how far that idea has come and what's next as the company expands.

Key Takeaways:

    You cannot patch your way out of agentic AI attacks, the only answer is building more resilient systems from the start

    The hardest translation in security is from policy to architecture, ambiguity and contradictions there cascade into every layer below

    Context is the missing ingredient in most security tooling: secure or insecure is a binary lens that doesn’t reflect reality

    Drift detection only works when you know what was approved in the first place, that’s the advantage of integrating into the design lifecycle

    Security decisions still belong to the business and engineers, Dawnguard removes the friction, not the ownership

    The shift from protection to resilience is already happening: it’s not if you get breached, it’s how contained the blast radius is

    European founders can compete, but capital conviction from investors matters as much as capital volume

Timestamps:

00:00 – Introduction

00:15 – Meet Dawnguard

00:48 – One year in: what proved Dawnguard was solving a real problem

01:30 – How customers are using the platform today: discover, design, deploy, monitor

03:20 – The shift-left moment: when architecture gets locked in and it’s already too late

05:15 – why organisations overestimate their resiliency requirements

06:15 – What Snyk, OPA and Sentinel leave unresolved 

08:30 – Guardrails vs. findings: preventing vulnerabilities instead of just reporting them

09:30 – Policy to architecture to code to production: where is the hardest translation?

11:00 – The Mythos era: agentic AI and why patching is a losing strategy

12:50 – The shift from protection to resilience

15:00 – Blast radius reduction and the holistic trade-off view Dawnguard provides

16:45 – Drift detection: how Dawnguard tells a legitimate change from a malicious one

18:20 – Prompting redesigns for cost, sustainability, and resilience

20:00 – Bringing guardrails into the developer IDE in real time

22:25 – Who owns the security decision?

25:45 – European digital sovereignty: what it concretely means for Dawnguard

27:55 – Raising €6.3 million from European funds in year one

29:10 – What excites Mahdi and Kim most about the road ahead

30:40 – Final message: what CISOs should be doing differently a year from now

Connect with the guests:

Mahdi Abdulrazak: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mahdiabdulrazak/

Kim van Lavieren: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kim-v-0645931b4/

Website: https://www.dawnguard.io/

Follow Cyber Security District:

Jeroen Prinse on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jprinse/

Laurens Jagt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurensjagt/

Website: https://www.cybersecuritydistrict.com/

All channels & newsletter: https://beacons.ai/cybersecuritydistrict

What does it take to build a cybersecurity company not once, but twice from the ground up?

In this episode of Cyber Security District, we sit down with Francisco Nina Rente, one of Portugal's most accomplished cybersecurity entrepreneurs. Francisco started his journey as a teenager tinkering with computers and quickly found his way into ethical hacking and open-source security communities. That curiosity became a career, which then led to a company.

His first venture grew from a university incubator into a 250-person operation delivering services across 22 countries, before being acquired by a global security group. After years scaling that business from the inside and taking on roles as country manager, CTO and board member, Francisco stepped away to build again.

This time, the mission is clearer: help organisations stop just detecting threats and start truly recovering from them. Art Resilia was born out of a conviction that the market was shifting from cybersecurity to cyber resilience, and Francisco positioned the company right at the centre of that shift.

Key Takeaways:

Cyber resilience is about recovery, not just defence

Focus beats opportunity-chasing, especially in the early days of a startup

The Commonwealth of a team always comes before individual interest

Trust-based security communication outlasts fear-based selling every time

Knowledge remains the core differentiator, even in the age of AI

Timestamps:

00:00 – Introduction
01:20 – From a family computer to a hacker mindset
04:00 – First paid gig: penetration testing for hardware
05:30 – Building Portugal's first incident response team at university
09:00 – Selling trust, not fear: early media and awareness work
11:00 – Scaling to 22 countries and finding the right investors
15:30 – The acquisition: joining a global security group
20:00 – Growing into CTO and leaving on his own terms
22:00 – The idea behind Art Resilia and reading the market shift
24:30 – The name: "The Art of Resilience"
25:00 – Where Art Resilia stands today: 50 people, 4 countries
27:00 – Why the Netherlands and Benelux?
28:00 – Lessons from 20 years of building: focus, people, pragmatism
33:00 – Culture, remote work, and hiring for values first
40:00 – What's next for Art Resilia in 3–5 years
43:00 – AI in cybersecurity: tool or transformation?
45:30 – Advice for young professionals entering the field
52:00 – Final message to CISOs: protect both business confidentiality and individual privacy

Connect with the guest:
Francisco Nina Rente: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frente/
Website: https://www.artresilia.com

 

Follow Cyber Security District:

Laurens Jagt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurensjagt/

Website: https://www.cybersecuritydistrict.com/

All channels & newsletter: https://beacons.ai/cybersecuritydistrict

What if you could clone your best cybersecurity consultant and put them to work on five engagements at once?

In this episode of Cyber Security District, we sit down with Leslie Clement and Erie Berhitu, co-founders of Clember AI, an EU-first, AI-native platform built to automate the repetitive, time-consuming work that holds cybersecurity consultants back. Both Leslie and Erie spent years grinding through the same manual loops at major consultancy firms document analysis, gap assessments, risk reports, roadmaps before deciding enough was enough.

Rather than build another consulting firm or hire more headcount, they built a platform. Clember AI now enables security consultants to run five or more client engagements simultaneously, with consistent, high-quality output every time. And they did it entirely bootstrapped, no VC, no investor pressure, just product-market fit and a clear-eyed vision of where cybersecurity consulting is heading.

In this episode, we explore:

How a company getting hacked on day one of the job launched Leslie’s career in cybersecurity

The year-long frustration that led Erie and Leslie to build Clember AI instead of another consulting firm

Why they chose to stay bootstrapped despite investor interest  and why they don’t regret it

How Clember AI automates the full consulting lifecycle: document ingestion, gap analysis, risk translation, and reporting

Why consistency across junior and senior consultants is a bigger deal than most firms admit

The shift from hourly billing to monthly retainers and how Clember keeps consulting firms “interesting” to clients year three and beyond

Their vision: becoming the Datasnipper of cybersecurity consulting

Why embracing AI is non-negotiable for CISOs  and why helping early-stage startups matters for the whole industry

Timestamps:

00:00 – Introduction

00:15 – Meet Leslie Clement and Erie Berhitu

01:40 – How Erie got into cybersecurity (and why it wasn’t exactly planned)

02:45 – Leslie’s rough first day: getting hacked with no tech team

04:00 – The shared frustration that sparked Clember AI

06:10 – Why they chose to build a tech firm instead of a consulting firm

08:30 – The first product concept: automating the questionnaire

11:20 – Who Clember AI is actually for: cybersecurity consultancy firms

14:00 – Billable hours vs. scale: how Clember changes the math

17:30 – The shift from hourly billing to monthly retainers and staying interesting in year three

22:00 – Will AI kill traditional consultancy? Leslie and Erie’s take

25:10 – How Clember works: document ingestion, gap analysis, risk translation, roadmaps

29:00 – Consistency across consultant seniority levels

31:30 – Hiring technical talent as non-technical founders

34:00 – Staying bootstrapped despite VC interest  and why pivoting was easier without investor pressure

38:30 – What made Clember appealing at an early stage

41:00 – The hiccups: work-life balance, family, and knowing when to step away

44:30 – Gut feeling vs. rational decision-making as founders

48:00 – The vision: Clember as the Datasnipper for cybersecurity consulting

51:30 – What’s next: new markets, sales hires, and scaling customer success

54:00 – Data privacy and security by design inside Clember

57:00 – Final message to CISOs: embrace innovation, and back the startups

Connect with the guests:

Leslie Clement: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leslie-clement/

Erie Berhitu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eberhitu/

Website: https://www.clember.ai/

 

Follow Cyber Security District:

Laurens Jagt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurensjagt/

Website: https://www.cybersecuritydistrict.com/

All channels & newsletter: https://beacons.ai/cybersecuritydistrict

In this episode of Cyber Security District, we speak with Tom Leijte, founder of Passguard, one of the most exciting emerging cybersecurity companies in the Netherlands. Passguard helps organizations detect when infected devices, stolen credentials, and active sessions show up on criminal marketplaces, giving security teams early visibility before exposure turns into a breach.

Tom shares how his journey started outside of “traditional” cybersecurity, working in private investigations where dark web intelligence was already part of high-stakes screening work. Together with his technical co-founder, he built the capabilities to infiltrate closed criminal forums and surface the kind of forensic-level logs most companies never see until it’s too late.

In this episode, we cover:

Using dark web intelligence for sensitive employee screening

Why “classic” dark web monitoring often gets deprioritized by security teams

The infostealer shift: stolen session tokens, not just leaked passwords

How session theft can bypass MFA and why that changes the game

How criminal marketplaces work (and how trust is built among criminals)

How Passguard infiltrates closed forums using reputation, escrow, and long-term access

Building a European-first solution and partnering with MSSPs / security platforms

Scaling after investment: team growth, ICP clarity, and market expansion

Timestamps:
00:00 – Intro
00:15 – Meet Tom Leijte and Passguard’s mission
00:37 – Early visibility: exposure before it becomes a breach
01:22 – Tom’s background in private investigations
02:13 – Screening sensitive roles using open-source + dark web sources
03:47 – Why dark web intelligence matters for organizations
04:39 – How Passguard started (and the co-founder story)
05:53 – What surprised Tom most about the dark web
06:20 – Data breaches vs data brokers: what ends up for sale
07:20 – Discovering infostealers and why they’re different
08:17 – Session tokens, MFA bypass, and the “unmanaged endpoint” problem
10:01 – What infostealers capture (sessions, access, and more)
11:10 – Why SaaS + remote work + BYOD changed attacker economics
12:27 – Supplier and branch-office risk: the blind spot organizations miss
14:31 – Why classic “dark web monitoring” wasn’t landing in the market
15:38 – The Mom Test and learning to run real customer conversations
18:08 – Reframing the problem: focusing on infostealer exposure
20:38 – How the dark web works (no “bookmark”, reputation, escrow)
23:11 – Passguard’s approach: bots, reputation, and long-term infiltration
25:55 – Real-world example: infostealers and large-scale government breaches
27:37 – What stolen access is worth and how it gets packaged for sale
29:19 – Screenshots, persistence, and “always up-to-date” stolen sessions
30:05 – Educating customers and turning awareness into action
31:03 – What Passguard delivers: evidence, context, and early alerts
33:08 – The Snowflake case: old credentials, massive impact
36:06 – Scaling after investment: pressure, growth, and coping
37:18 – Why Tom chose experienced cyber investors and operators
39:43 – Passguard as intelligence inside MSP/MSSP security workflows
41:45 – Team expansion and what roles matter most next
43:27 – ICP clarity and European market expansion
45:27 – Signal message to CISOs: give startups a chance early
46:50 – Outro

Connect with the guests:

Tom Leijte: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-leijte-01596536/

Website: https://www.passguard.com/

Follow Cybersecurity District:

Laurens Jagt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurensjagt/

Website: https://www.cybersecuritydistrict.com/

All channels & newsletter: https://beacons.ai/cybersecuritydistrict

In this episode of Cyber Security District, we sit down with Julius Muth, co-founder of Revel8, a fast-growing startup tackling one of the most urgent threats in modern cybersecurity: deepfake-powered social engineering.

Julius flew in from Berlin to join us in the Amsterdam studio and breaks down how attackers are already cloning voices, abusing call centers, and using multi-channel manipulation (email, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, video calls) to bypass technical defenses and target employees at scale.

We also get into how Revel8 scaled from early MVPs to large enterprise rollouts, the team’s operator DNA from Celonis, and their goal to build “10 million human firewalls.”

In this episode, we dive into:

Why deepfake voice phishing is exploding via service desks and call centers

The real-world deepfake fraud case that changed everything (25M USD)

How Revel8 personalizes awareness with role-based “playlist” simulations

Why time-to-first-report beats click rate as a security KPI

How Revel8 scaled fast: funding, enterprise rollouts, and culture

Key Takeaways:

Deepfakes turn trust signals (voice, video) into attack surfaces

Context-rich phishing is far more effective than generic campaigns

Awareness works best in short, relevant, continuous moments

Measure reporting behavior and speed, not “gotcha” click rates

Modern threats require modern training across every channel

Timestamps:
00:00 – Introduction
00:15 – Meet Julius Muth and Revel8’s mission
01:20 – Why deepfakes are a serious enterprise risk
02:30 – Voice phishing through service desks and call centers
04:00 – A real incident example and why it’s “hot” right now
04:45 – Founders’ background and the Celonis operator mindset
05:40 – Validating the market (100 handwritten letters)
07:10 – The deepfake fraud case: 25M USD and what it proved
09:20 – Social engineering is leveling up (multi-channel trust)
12:00 – The “podcast vote” scam and impersonation patterns
14:20 – From MVPs to enterprise: what changed after hiring a senior CTO
19:00 – Why traditional awareness training fails
23:40 – The “Spotify playlist” model: personalized learning journeys
26:00 – Turning real attacks into simulations
28:40 – Better KPIs: time-to-first-report and workforce sensors
31:10 – Modern payloads and “make the victim execute” tactics
34:40 – Scaling growth: team, cold-calling “Champions League,” and GTM
41:40 – Advisors, credibility, and enterprise access
45:00 – The goal of “10 million human firewalls”
46:10 – Why the name Revel8 (and the naming story)
48:40 – Hiring profile and what they look for
51:40 – Munich office move and what’s next
52:35 – Final message to CISOs

Connect with the guest:
Julius Muth: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julius-muth/

Revel8: https://www.revel8.ai/

Follow Cyber Security District:
Laurens Jagt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurensjagt/
Website: https://www.cybersecuritydistrict.com/
All channels & newsletter: https://beacons.ai/cybersecuritydistrict