We are thrilled to announce that our Chief Technology Officer, Jae Hossell, has been named a finalist for the prestigious Cyber Culture Award at the 2026 Scottish Cyber Awards. This recognition is a testament to Jae's pioneering leadership and his profound impact on embedding a security-first, ethical mindset throughout Approov.The nomination highlights Jae’s pivotal role in architecting our technical philosophy, which is centered on two core values: “Security by Design” and “Data Minimization.”
A Culture Built on Trust and Resilience
Under Jae's technical stewardship, cybersecurity at Approov is not a bureaucratic hurdle, but a point of engineering pride. His vision has fostered an environment where the R&D team prioritizes user privacy and platform resilience above all else, leading to some extraordinary achievements:
- Operational Excellence: Approov has maintained zero significant downtime since 2017. This record is the direct result of a deliberate culture of redundancy, rigorous testing, and a hyper-resilient mobile attestation service supported across AWS and GCP.
- Ethical Engineering: Jae has championed Data Minimization, ensuring that we verify mobile app integrity without collecting any Personally Identifiable Information (PII). This ethical stance has reduced our clients’ "blast radius" to near zero, providing insulation from GDPR and privacy risks—a major factor in our rapid sales growth.
- Compliance and Maturity: His leadership, alongside (acting) CISO Johannes Schneiders, drove the successful completion of the SOC 2 Type 1 initiative and is currently finalizing SOC 2 Type 2. This alignment transforms compliance into a badge of engineering pride.
- Industry Trust and Client Confidence: Our culture of vigilance has directly resulted in deep, high-stakes partnerships with industry leaders like Cloudflare, BMW Group and Jaguar Land Rover, who trust us to secure their most sensitive mobile interfaces.
Continuing a Legacy of Innovation
Jae's nomination for the Cyber Culture Award continues Approov's tradition of recognized excellence in the Scottish tech sector. Last year, our novel and patented attestation technology—developed under Jae’s direction—was the Winner of the Innovation Award at the 2025 Scottish Cyber Awards.
The winners of the 2026 Scottish Cyber Awards will be announced at a gala ceremony on Thursday, March 26th, at the EICC in Edinburgh. We congratulate all the finalists for 2026 Scottish Cyber Awards and look forward to celebrating the collective effort to advance cybersecurity excellence. This nomination is a proud moment that validates the hard work and deep commitment of every member of the Approov team.
