SQUR was one of five finalists at the ATHENE Startup Award UP26@it-sa 2026. ATHENE, Europe's largest research centre for IT security, announced the shortlist on 27 August 2026, and the final was a live pitch on 28 October at it-sa Expo&Congress in Nuremberg. Fuzzware took first place; we are proud to have made the final five.
The award
UP26@it-sa is awarded by ATHENE, the National Research Center for Applied Cybersecurity in Darmstadt, and presented each year at it-sa Expo&Congress. ATHENE calls it the most important startup prize for cybersecurity in the DACH region.
Five companies made this year's shortlist, and between them they covered most of what the field currently worries about: Blindsight (Zurich) on monitoring AI systems, Complioty (Munich) on CRA compliance for machinery, Fuzzware (Bochum) on fuzzing embedded software, RedCastle (Heubach) on SOC services for mid-sized companies, and SQUR (Weingarten) on autonomous pentesting.
The final
The five finalists pitched live on stage on 28 October 2026 at it-sa Expo&Congress in Nuremberg, in front of the jury and the audience. Fuzzware (Bochum) won, Complioty (Munich) came second, and RedCastle (Heubach) third. SQUR and Blindsight completed the field of five. Congratulations to the winners. It was a strong field, and reaching the final five of the DACH region's leading cybersecurity startup prize is something we are proud of.
What we pitched
Two questions decide what a security test is actually worth. How often does your software change? And how often do you check whether it is still secure? The gap between those two answers is the window in which a vulnerability is already in your product and nobody knows it yet. Test once a year and that window averages six months. Test every month and it is two weeks.
SQUR closes it by attacking web applications and APIs the way an attacker would. Every confirmed finding is proven with a working exploit rather than inferred from a signature, the report is written for an auditor, and the certificate updates with every clean run. If you want to watch an autonomous pentest run against something of your own, or talk through what an exploit-proven finding looks like in front of an auditor, book a slot.