The company was recognized for revolutionizing cybersecurity delivery to empower small and medium-sized businesses, addressing a historically overlooked sector in the industry.
MINNEAPOLIS, Feb. 8, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Ostra Cybersecurity, a company that provides a multi-layered, holistic, and fully managed Security as a Service tailored for small and mid-sized businesses, is excited to announce its selection as a 2024 ACG MN BOLD Awards Finalist.
The twelfth Annual BOLD Awards are presented by the Minnesota Chapter of the Association for Corporate Growth® (ACG). The BOLD Awards are designed to honor and recognize innovation, inspirational moves, bold visions, and leaders that have made BOLD moves to positively grow, restructure or enhance their companies for the benefit of all stakeholders. The program celebrates the corporate leaders and teams that are behind successful mergers and acquisitions, financing, and extraordinary strategies that led to sustainability, remarkable performance and/or accelerated growth January 1st, 2022 – December 31st, 2023.
The BOLD Awards feature finalists in six categories; Small & Growing, Middle Market, Large & Established, BOLDest Transaction, BOLDest Leader, and BOLD inspiration: Community Involvement. Ostra is a BOLD Award Finalist in the Small & Growing Category. The BOLD winners of each category will be announced during an event to be held February 27, 2024 at the Metropolitan Club in Minneapolis, with the BOLD-est of the BOLD winner being chosen via a real-time, live audience vote later in the evening.
What makes Ostra BOLD?
One of the factors in the judges' decision to name Ostra as a BOLD Award Finalist was the story behind the company's origins, as well as Ostra's ongoing commitment to serving small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs)—a marginalized community within the cybersecurity industry.
Prior to starting Ostra, Founder Michael Kennedy spent more than 20 years building cybersecurity solutions for one of the world's largest healthcare providers. He understood that most companies outside the Fortune 100 do not have enterprise-level cyber protection for their most valuable asset, their data. But this widening gap became even more apparent to Kennedy after a personal friend's Minnesota-based business experienced a devastating ransomware event.
After hearing his friend share the severe impact it had on his small business and the lack of resources available to proactively protect against it, Kennedy knew he needed to do something to help other small business owners prevent these types of situations. He leveraged his strong reputation and relationships in the security industry to design a best-in-class solution that proactively protects SMBs against cybersecurity threats—thus Ostra was born.
Many statistics demonstrate that SMBs are more vulnerable than other businesses when it comes to cybersecurity. For example, Accenture's Cost of Cybercrime Study showed that 43 percent of cyberattacks are aimed at small businesses, yet only 14 percent are prepared to defend themselves.
Ostra works with Managed Service Providers (MSPs), consultants, incident response firms, assessment firms and others who need to deliver best-in-class security solutions for their SMB clients as part of a broader IT services strategy. According to Kennedy, this approach enables Ostra to protect SMBs at scale unlike any other by providing a true cybersecurity team tailored to their unique needs—all at a fraction of the insourcing cost.
2023 Achievements
The following highlights underscore Ostra's commitment to safeguarding digital landscapes in 2023:
- Processed more than 30 billion events, investigated 1.3 million alerts, and remediated 20,000 security incidents
- Round-the-clock client protection from cyber threats by Ostra's team members: 24x7x365
- More than 3X growth in SMB client protection—with approximately half these organizations located in Minnesota
- Launched new diversified managed cybersecurity offerings to meet evolving SMB client needs with Ostra Encompass (TM) and Ostra Extend (TM)
Kennedy attributes the company's success to the highly committed, authentic attributes of the Ostra team.
"I am so grateful for our people—Ostra's talented employees have a reputation for going 'all-in' to make enterprise-level cybersecurity accessible and affordable for small and medium-sized businesses," he said. "We are all united by the belief that regardless of size, all businesses deserve the same level of protection that the world's largest companies spend millions of dollars on each year."
About Ostra Cybersecurity
As Your Trusted Cybersecurity Team, Ostra makes cybersecurity simple and accessible to businesses of all sizes. Ostra provides its partners and their clients with multi-layered, comprehensive, and fully managed Security as a Service. Ostra's proprietary solutions combine Fortune 100-caliber tools, tech, and talent to ensure threats are not only detected and hunted, but also fully remediated. With a mission to simplify cybersecurity for small to mid-sized businesses, Ostra believes everyone deserves best-in-class data protection—not just big business. For more information, visit www.ostra.net.
About ACG (Association for Corporate Growth)
Founded in 1954, ACG has 59 chapters across the globe and the network consists of over 90,000 professionals. ACG Minnesota's chapter began in 1966 and has nearly 300 members active in Minnesota's vibrant, business community. ACG Minnesota won the ACG Chapter of the Year award in 2015. ACG's mission is to drive middle-market growth. Visit www.acg.org/minnesota for more information.
Media Contact
Stacey Kusnier, Ostra Cybersecurity, 1 612-702-0228, [email protected], https://www.ostra.net/
SOURCE Ostra Cybersecurity
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