With the post-pandemic accelerated digital adoption, cyber-attacks on startups and small businesses are rapidly increasing around the world. While the big, high-profile breaches make headlines, many intruders prefer to target smaller unprepared organizations. During the last year, cyberattacks on small companies surged by more than 150%, according to RiskRecon, a Mastercard company that evaluates companies’ security risk. The reasons behind this trend are twofold. Smaller companies usually have weaker security. High-profile targets will likely attract a stronger law enforcement response. With an increase in attacks, growing regulatory demands for data protection and the acute shortage of cybersecurity talent, creates a significant challenge for enterprises to secure their businesses and reduce cyber risks. Scybers’ mission is to help enterprises and startups navigate these emerging cyber risks with a fully managed security as a service.

Scybers, today announced the addition of Chandika Mendis, a veteran technology and startup mentor, to its global advisory board to strengthen their efforts to support startups manage cybersecurity and compliance requirements effectively.

Chandika is a veteran in the IT industry with over 25 years of experience. He was part of the senior leadership team at the global digital engineering firm, Virtusa driving engineering innovation and leading the teams that built award-winning sales and delivery differentiators. His contributions were a critical element in growing the company from 300+ when he joined to 40,000 when he left in 2023 to fulfill his long-standing passion: providing CTO and technical advisory services to startups. Prior to Virtusa, he worked in senior technology leadership roles in Colombo, London and Silicon Valley with both global enterprises and startups. He is currently based in California and works closely with startup groups as an advisor and angel investor.

“We are thrilled to welcome Chandika to the Scybers advisory board,” said Madu Ratnayake, co-founder of Scybers Inc. “His deep expertise in technology, AI as well as his extensive experience in the startup ecosystem, will be invaluable to us as we continue to grow our services to help global startups and fintech’s secure their digital assets and build our AI-enabled cybersecurity service delivery platform.”

Scybers help startups to figure out an optimum security strategy, support the execution of security programs to mitigate risks, manage third-party risks, assure compliance to standards such as SOC2, PCI-DSS, ISO27001 etc. and manage detection and response to threats 24x7.  Chandika will provide strategic guidance to Scybers on a variety of topics, including product development, AI, go-to-market strategy, and customer engagement and support the identification of new opportunities for growth and expansion.

“I am excited to join the Scybers advisory board and to help the company achieve its ambitious goals,” said Chandika Mendis. “I believe that Scybers is well-positioned to become a leading global cybersecurity firm, and I look forward to contributing to its success.”

Image Caption - Chandika Mendis, Member of the advisory board, Scybers Inc.