Amsterdam is home to AMS-IX, one of the world’s largest internet exchanges, making it a physical and digital gateway to Europe. This hyperconnectivity creates massive vulnerability, which, in turn, has spawned a highly sophisticated cybersecurity ecosystem. Driven by a pragmatic Dutch culture and a strong talent flow from the AIVD (General Intelligence and Security Service), the city has moved beyond basic antivirus software to focus on threat intelligence, privacy engineering, and autonomous red teaming.
Here are the 10 cybersecurity startups in Amsterdam that are defining the European defence landscape in 2025.
EclecticIQ
Founded by Joep Gommers and Raymon van der Velde, EclecticIQ has evolved into a global powerhouse for Threat Intelligence. The company has raised over €47 million to solve the problem of alert fatigue in Security Operations Centres (SOCs). Their platform ingests massive amounts of threat data from open and closed sources, structuring it so that analysts can actually use it to hunt threats rather than just reacting to alarms. Trusted by national governments and NATO, EclecticIQ provides the intelligence layer that allows large organisations to understand who is attacking them and why, shifting the focus from reactive patching to proactive defence.
Eye Security
Job Kuijpers, a former employee of the Dutch intelligence service (AIVD), founded Eye Security to protect the mid-market businesses that are usually left defenceless against ransomware. While enterprise security solutions are too complex and expensive for the average manufacturing plant or logistics firm, Eye Security provides a managed service that combines 24/7 monitoring with cyber insurance. Having recently secured €36 million in Series B funding led by J.P. Morgan Growth Equity Partners, they are rapidly scaling across Germany and Belgium, offering a peace of mind subscription that ensures if a company gets hit, they have both the technical team to fix it and the insurance payout to survive it.
Hadrian
While most companies wait for an audit to find vulnerabilities, Hadrian attacks them continuously. Founders Olivier Beg and Rogier Fischer, who are celebrated ethical hackers, built an autonomous Red Teaming platform that simulates real-world attacks on a company’s infrastructure. The system maps the entire attack surface from the outside in and automatically tests for weaknesses. Backed by HV Capital with over €10 million in funding, Hadrian enables CISOs to view their network through the eyes of a hacker in real-time, transitioning security testing from a yearly compliance exercise to a daily operational reality.
Zivver
Human error is the leading cause of data breaches, and Zivver was built to fix the fat finger problem. Founders Rick Goud, Alwin Schoemaker, and Vincent van Donselaar developed a secure communication platform that integrates directly into Outlook and Gmail. It uses machine learning to alert users before they send an email if they are about to send sensitive data such as patient records or legal documents to the wrong recipient or via an unencrypted channel. With over 6,000 organisations using the platform, Zivver has become the standard for preventing data leaks in healthcare and government sectors across the Benelux and the UK.
ThreatFabric
Mobile banking is under constant siege, and ThreatFabric provides the intelligence to hold the line. Founded by Han Sahin and Yorick Koster, the company specialises in detecting advanced Android and iOS malware that targets financial apps. Their technology sits inside the banking application, analysing device behaviour to detect banking trojans that try to overlay fake login screens or hijack transactions. By serving major financial institutions, they actively track and classify new malware families as they emerge on the dark web, providing the early warning system banks need to block fraud before money is transferred from the account.
Fourthline
Although often categorised as fintech, Fourthline is fundamentally a digital identity security company. Led by Krik Gunning, they utilise AI to verify identities for banks such as N26 and Trade Republic, thereby protecting the financial system from synthetic fraud and money laundering rings. Their technology analyses the physics of an ID document and uses biometric liveness checks to ensure a user is physically present. With over €70 million in funding, they are the gatekeepers of the European digital economy, ensuring that the person opening a bank account is not a deepfake or a bot.
Roseman Labs
Data collaboration is often hindered by privacy concerns, but Roseman Labs addresses this issue with mathematical solutions. Founders Roderick Rodenburg, Toon Segers, and Niek Bouman utilise Multi-Party Computation (MPC), a cryptographic technique that enables organisations to jointly analyse data without revealing the underlying sensitive information to each other. This allows, for example, a hospital and an insurance company to look for patterns in patient data without either side ever seeing a single medical record. Their technology creates a “virtual clean room,” unlocking the value of sensitive data while remaining mathematically compliant with GDPR.
BreachLock
Seemant Sehgal foundedBreachLock to disrupt the traditional consultancy model of penetration testing. They offer “Penetration Testing as a Service” (PTaaS), which combines AI-driven automated scanning with human ethical hacking. This hybrid approach allows companies to run tests on demand and receive results in a cloud portal, rather than waiting weeks for a static PDF report. By making elite-level testing faster and more affordable, BreachLock enables agile development teams to fix vulnerabilities as quickly as they ship code, integrating security directly into the DevOps lifecycle.
Guardey
Small businesses are often the most vulnerable but have the least time for training. Guardey, founded by Joost Bruin, gamifies security awareness to make it actually engaging. Their platform utilises a story-driven game to educate employees on how to identify phishing emails and social engineering attacks. Instead of boring video lectures, users play a weekly challenge that builds a human firewall. This approachable, low-friction method has made them a favourite for SMEs looking to meet insurance requirements and improve cyber hygiene without hiring a dedicated security officer.
Ubiqu
As passwords become obsolete, Ubiqu is building the future of tokenised authentication. Led by Boris Goranov, they provide high-assurance security technology that turns a mobile phone into a secure hardware token. Their cryptography allows governments and banks to issue digital identities that meet the highest EU security standards (eIDAS ‘High’). By replacing physical smart cards and dongles with a mobile app that offers the same level of security, Ubiqu is facilitating the transition to fully digital governance and secure remote signing across Europe.