Protostars

Protostars is a RegTech and InsurTech company building AI infrastructure to improve how cyber risk is assessed, underwritten, and managed across regulated markets. The company converts real-time cybersecurity and compliance evidence into certifiable, insurance-ready assurance that supports better underwriting decisions and more efficient claims handling.

As cyber risk becomes a material driver of business interruption and loss, insurers face challenges from fragmented data, duplicated controls, and costly manual audits. Protostars addresses this by providing continuous cyber assurance grounded in verified technical evidence rather than static questionnaires or point-in-time assessments. The platform ingests data from across the software lifecycle — from code and development pipelines to cloud infrastructure and endpoint security — and maps it once across frameworks such as the EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), DORA, NIS2, and recognised security standards.

A core differentiator is Protostars’ focus on certifiable assurance. Instead of opaque risk scores, the platform produces time-stamped, auditable evidence aligned with regulatory and software certification requirements, including CRA-linked CE marking for digital products. This reduces control duplication for SMEs while giving insurers greater confidence at underwriting and claims stage, without changing existing broker, MGA, or capital models.

Protostars emphasises explainable, audit-ready AI. Through participation in the AI Accelerator at the University of Edinburgh, the company leverages high-performance computing to aggregate and analyse cybersecurity data at scale, making assurance more affordable for insurers.

Working with partners including InsTech.ie, EY UK FinTech Lab, and Lloyd’s-adjacent stakeholders, Protostars supports confident cyber capital deployment and improved resilience for digital product-led SMEs across Ireland, the UK, and Europe

Protostars was created to address a recurring gap in regulated digital systems: cybersecurity compliance was costly, repetitive, and poorly connected to how risk is priced and managed by insurers. Despite rising cyber losses and regulation, organisations continued to rely on static audits that failed to reflect real operational risk.

The company was founded by Kim McKayed, whose career began in network engineering at Orange Business Services before moving into regulated financial infrastructure. Kim later led service delivery for Bank of Ireland’s network operations through BT Ireland, gaining first-hand experience of operational resilience, auditability, and regulatory scrutiny at national scale. He subsequently delivered software platforms across insurance, mobility, and critical infrastructure.

Kim also led the delivery of a First Notification of Loss and vehicle recovery platform used by Zurich and SIXT, operating from Dublin Airport. The system later supported the prevention of a major pan-European insurance fraud case, reinforcing the importance of technical evidence and audit trails in underwriting and claims.

Protostars was established to bring these lessons into cyber resilience. The company builds AI infrastructure that continuously listens to technical systems, maps evidence once across regulatory frameworks, and produces certifiable assurance insurers and regulators can rely on.

Supported by Enterprise Ireland and Growing Capital, Protostars secured €310k in pre-seed funding and validated its platform with digital product–led SMEs. In 2024–2025, the company joined InsTech.ie Foundry, the EY UK FinTech Growth Programme, and the AI Accelerator at the University of Edinburgh, using high-performance computing to scale compliance data aggregation more affordably.

Today, Protostars works with insurers and regulators to validate a new assurance layer that improves cyber underwriting and claims confidence across Ireland, the UK, and Europe.

Kim McKayed

CEO & Co-Founder

Mohamed Fayez

CTO & Co-Founder

Militsa Hristova

Commercial Director (France)

Shurooq Maghraby

Engineering Lead – Cairo Office