New data protection laws, increasing regulation, greater risk of cyber attacks: The challenges for entrepreneurs are becoming ever greater. However, compliance can be largely automated through artificial intelligence. Secjur calls itself one of the world’s leading providers in this field. The German legal tech scaleup is now launching its business in Switzerland.
On September 1, a new data protection law (revDSG) has come into force in Switzerland. All companies are now obliged to adapt to the revised regulations, which are aligned with EU directives. Secjur’s founders are very familiar with the EU regulations. In 2018, Niklas Hanitsch and Manuel Stahl founded their start-up for automated compliance, joined by Simon Pentzien and Sven Moritz as co-founders by 2021. Since then, they have won the German Start-up Cup for their solution. Just in time for the adaptation to the EU data protection law, they are launching their business in Switzerland with offices in Bern and Zurich.
Compliance has become a challenge for companies of all sizes, and the work behind it is often manual, repetitive and expensive. Hamburg-based Secjur has developed its Digital Compliance Office, an AI-based automation platform for compliance processes that can save hundreds of man-hours. Secjur helps companies in diverse industries digitally automate their compliance processes, including data protection, information security, anti-money laundering and whistleblowing. In addition to international corporations such as Siemens and Samsung, customers primarily include SMEs and fast-growing companies such as Tomorrow Bank. “In the coming years, there will be many more compliance challenges, such as the AI regulation. Regulation can help protect consumer rights and make both the digital and the real world a better place,” says lawyer and Chief Innovation Officer Niklas Hanitsch.
With the new data protection law in Switzerland, Secjur’s founders recognize the opportune time to implement their expansion strategy in the DACH region. In addition to the more than 70 employees in Hamburg, Berlin, Regensburg and Munich, around 20 employees will in future look after the Swiss business from Berne and Zurich. “In Germany, we have already easily implemented the General Data Protection Regulation for hundreds of companies in 2018. With this head start in knowledge and our intelligent platform, we support our Swiss customers in implementing all requirements correctly right from the start.” Secjur addresses both corporations and SMEs that want to create trust among customers and partners, prevent cybercrime, avoid fines and optimize processes.
Secjur’s data protection solution, Digital Compliance Office, provides a comprehensive overview of all relevant processes and documents and is easy to use even for beginners. The central control of all compliance issues saves time-consuming multiple audits: With over 60 API connections (such as Jira, Slack, Hubspot, Salesforce or Lexoffice), Secjur integrates into existing tech stacks. This allows audits to be partially automated – and specific recommendations for action to be generated at the push of a button. For a company with around 50 employees, the audit effort can be reduced from around 14 to 2 hours per week so far, and from around 23 to 2 hours for 250 employees – an immense resource saving. The data is hosted in Germany.
“We aim to offer the best and most widely used compliance automation solution in the world,” says co-founder Manuel Stahl.
