SeedBlink Blog

82% of cybersecurity breaches are due to human error. Awakeness, a Romanian startup, is tackling this challenge head-on with its AI-powered SaaS platform designed to transform human risk into cybersecurity resilience.

Led by seasoned cybersecurity experts Dan Broasca, CEO, and Gabriel Avramescu, CPTO, Awakeness aims to transform how organizations approach cybersecurity training.

In today’s interview, we sat down with Dan to talk about Awakeness's mission, the technology behind their platform, and their vision for the future.

1. What inspired you to create Awakeness, and how does your background influence the company's mission?

My journey in cybersecurity has always been about understanding how technology can be used to empower people. Over the years, I realized that despite advancements in security tools, human error remained the primary vulnerability. I saw countless organizations invest heavily in technical defenses yet still fall victim to breaches caused by mistakes like phishing attacks, misconfigurations, or weak passwords. This inspired me to create Awakeness, a platform designed to tackle this challenge head-on.

By combining my experience with Gabriel’s expertise, we built an AI-powered platform that delivers personalized, behavior-driven training, transforming employees from security risks into proactive defenders.

2. Can you tell us more about how Awakeness's AI-driven platform works?

Traditional learning modules often rely on generic content that employees can preview repeatedly without much impact. At Awakeness, we’ve taken a different approach.

Our AI-driven platform profiles each user based on their role, industry, and skill level to deliver highly contextual scenarios. For example, instead of generic phishing simulations, our platform generates realistic scenarios featuring familiar names — like colleagues, managers, or even projects from their workplace.

This personalized experience significantly boosts engagement and makes the training far more effective. By mimicking real-life or familiar environments, employees are better prepared to recognize and respond to security threats in their daily work.

3. What makes Awakeness different from other cybersecurity training solutions?

As I mentioned earlier, our platform goes beyond traditional learning methods. Instead of relying on generic content that employees can repeatedly preview with minimal impact, Awakeness leverages AI-driven profiling to customize training based on each employee’s role, industry, and skill level.

This is a unique approach adopted by only a handful of companies in the industry. By delivering highly contextual scenarios that reflect the employee’s real-world environment, we ensure the training is practical and engaging.

In addition, we leverage CERT input alerts on phishing threats to generate simulated attacks based on real-world incidents. This proactive approach ensures employees are trained in emerging tactics that attackers are actively using.

By combining personalized learning with real-time threat intelligence, Awakeness prepares employees to identify and respond to the latest security risks, improving both awareness and resilience.

These are just two key differentiators, but we have an ambitious roadmap ahead — with exciting innovations and enhancements still to come.

4. In what ways does Awakeness ensure compliance with regulations such as GDPR?

Awakeness is hosted in a Western Europe cloud, prioritizing privacy protection to ensure data security and regulatory compliance. The platform is fully compliant with GDPR, as well as with DORA Regulation, the NIS 2 Directive, the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, ISO 27001, and many other global regulations and standards.

What’s crucial to highlight is that a significant number of these standards explicitly require cybersecurity training and simulation attacks as a core compliance element. This underscores the growing recognition that employee awareness and preparedness are critical to building a resilient security posture.

5. Could you share some success stories from clients who have implemented your solution?

Our MVP was successfully launched in December 2024, marking a significant milestone for Awakeness. Our customer DPWorld has been a valued design customer and early adopter, playing a pivotal role in shaping our platform, and expressed high satisfaction with the results.

Testimonial:

“Awakeness has transformed our approach to cybersecurity training. The personalized scenarios and real-world simulations have significantly improved our employees’ awareness and response capabilities.”

6. The market opportunity for cybersecurity awareness training is projected to reach €9.16B by 2027. How is Awakeness positioning itself to capitalize on this growth?

With the cybersecurity awareness training market expected to reach €9.16 billion by 2027, we are strategically positioning Awakeness to secure a meaningful share of this growth.

Our goal is to achieve €18 million in revenue by 2027, representing approximately 0.2% of the projected market value — a realistic yet ambitious target that reflects our growth potential.

With a targeted marketing strategy supported by European regulations such as NIS2 and DORA, we are confident that our platform’s innovative features, personalized training experiences, and proactive threat simulations will enable us to capture a solid market presence and deliver measurable impact for our clients.

7. What are the next key milestones in the company’s future?

Looking ahead, we are preparing for a major release in just two weeks, which will introduce enhanced features and further elevate the platform’s capabilities.

Additionally, we are advancing our AI integration to further personalize learning experiences, enhance threat simulations, and improve risk profiling.

In the next three months, we plan to expand our platform’s accessibility by adding support for 20 new languages, ensuring a broader reach across diverse markets.

To support our growth, we are also developing a dedicated marketing team focused on regional and European-level expansion, ensuring our platform reaches organizations that need robust cybersecurity awareness solutions.

Our ambitious roadmap includes continuous innovation, with a focus on delivering powerful features that strengthen organizations’ resilience against human-related cybersecurity risks.

8. For potential investors, what makes Awakeness a strong investment opportunity right now?

Our platform has already achieved key milestones, including a successful MVP launch in December 2024, which offers investors the opportunity to enter the market early and capitalize on our growth potential. Additionally, the current 30% discount for early adopters provides a significant advantage, encouraging organizations to onboard quickly and scale adoption.

With the NIS2 and DORA regulations creating a pressing need for cybersecurity awareness solutions at a local or European level, Awakeness is perfectly aligned to meet these demands with our compliance-driven training platform.

Our experienced team of senior security specialists and seasoned developers, combined with our understanding of local and regional market dynamics, positions us to deliver impactful solutions at scale.

Explore the opportunity on SeedBlink.