2019 has been pretty special for us. We wanted to share a selection of highlights from this whirlwind of a year with our friends and partners – so read on if you want to learn more.

For the better part of its ten years, Kivu has been a boutique consultancy with a small and dedicated team of exceptional analysts. However, with the rise of ransomware and corresponding increase in demand for our response and remediation services, we decided it was time to grow beyond our traditional size and scope. Private investment by asset management company Bow River, finalized in February of this year, allowed us to scale up our operations and services to that end. Read the press release announcing the investment here.

April marked Kivu’s 10th anniversary, all the more significant because 2019 was already shaping up to be an exceptional year. Private investment, exponential growth, new offices and record-breaking caseload all contributed to making this year one for the annals.

In June, Kivu celebrated being nominated for no less than three awards at the 2019 Advisen Cyber Risk Awards – Pre-Breach Team of the Year, Response Team of the Year and Cyber Service Vendor of the Year. The Advisen awards are determined by ‘People’s Choice’, and we are grateful for our nominations across three categories as they represent recognition from our peers and partners.

Throughout the year, Bow River’s investment enabled us to grow our team of cyber security experts, hiring established analysts and exceptional graduates to build capacity for the future. Our U.S. offices are growing in size and number, and in June we were proud to open our London office at the heart of the London insurance market. We now have ten centers of excellence across the U.S. and UK, with further growth and geographic reach planned in 2020.

Our global network of trusted partners and consultants allows us to respond to incidents anywhere in the world, as happened in July, when Kivu worked a case that spanned 29 sites in 12 countries. Our Post-Breach Remediation analysts collaborated with international partners to form a 35-person strong team that worked tirelessly to restore the client’s systems.

Also in July, Kivu was nominated for Cyber Risk Service Provider of the Year by London Market stalwart Insurance Insider. The team attended the awards in late September, kicking off a month of industry events and travel which saw Kivu speaking at summits in Brussels, Santa Monica, New York, London and further afield.

In October Kivu become a registered Money Services Business, dramatically increasing our ransomware payment capabilities and providing additional security to clients. For more information on how Kivu can help organizations reduce business downtime with fully compliant and faster ransom payments, contact us.

In November Kivu welcomed its COO, Carl Herberger, who joined us from Radware and brings decades of cyber security experience to the role. With ambitious growth targets in both North America and Europe, Kivu needs a COO that has both front-line cyber security experience and managerial nous. Carl is that person, and we look forward to communicating exciting company developments in the new year.

Here’s to 2020 and beyond!

For more information on Kivu’s incident response services, as well as its full suite of cyber security support, email info@kivuconsulting.com.