What a journey it has been for Cyrex, it scarcely feels like eight years at all! We’ve come a long way, from a small team starting in college, to a global presence working with some of the biggest names. Our growth has been so much over these years that we know, all those years ago, we couldn’t have dreamed of where we are now.   

Cyrex’ Beginnings

What would become Cyrex began during the co-founders time at college pursuing degrees in cybersecurity. Mathieu Huysman and Tim De Wachter had fun together developing a penetration testing service, starting their offerings in fintech. Penetration testing has always been the core of Cyrex and the service was honed across banking apps, financial solutions, and other fintech platforms.  

Around 2 years after that, the pair were offered an opportunity from a game publisher in Germany. That was where the gaming penetration testing focus began, the hook and addiction into solving the problem of game hacking. As a Belgian company, the gaming scene isn’t that big. So, in search of new opportunities in gaming, they realised they had to go international and broaden their net for catching gaming contracts.  

Skills Honed, Lessons Learned

For some time, they worked on bug bounties as they provided a good source of income and reputation. It came to a point where their bug bounty work was so efficient that it became too expensive for companies. Because Mat and Tim were so good at discovering bug bounties, the best thing some of the companies could do would be to hire them instead. Here it was that the formation of Cyrex began officially.  

The team was generally just Mat and Tim, with a few others hopping in and out. This small founder team was in charge of everything in those early years from marketing to sales, hacking operations, legal work, and everything in between. But the challenge of game hacking had them excited. International expansion also led them to understand their predicament. They were an unknown, a new name with no portfolio and only a handful of references. Bug bounties were a good way in, but it wasn’t enough.  

Mat and Tim quickly realised that they were so focused on increasing the quality and efficiency of their technical operations that they had neglected sales and marketing. And so they adapted, an action that would define their work for the future – always adapting and improving. Around here, they separated tasks and began to put a drive in both marketing themselves and selling their services – rather than relying on their technical prowess and word of mouth. It didn’t take long because they soon had momentum and it hasn’t stopped since.  

Evolving Cyrex Over the Years

The results of sales and marketing were quick and expansion came with it again. Their team grew to incorporate their first marketing executive and their first content writer. The number of clients and attention on them skyrocketed. With that attention meant further growth and more growth meant bigger and better offerings. Penetration testing was joined by software development and it was a complementary expansion, something that many clients wanted already. And in the years that followed, load testing became the third pillar of Cyrex.  

From here, the story is simple and well-chartered on social media. The team grew, their offerings increased, and they have continued to build, break, and scale software every day since.  

This also meant the exciting opportunities to work with bigger clients. Games of every genre, titles that the team were stoked to get their hands on. Finally, with this growth came the opportunity to change the world of cybersecurity even more. They began to develop and build their own products and tools to make the digital world safer and more stable.  

Another huge element of our growth was Cyrex joining with a larger group, partnering for further collaborative opportunities. By working alongside this larger group, with its own global focus on gaming and services, Cyrex was further enhanced in opportunities and clients. This jump was supported by gaming industry veterans and senior leadership of the group, Orad Elkayam and Zoi Vitsentzou.  

Cyrex up to 2023

We’re delighted to say that Cyrex continues to work with huge names and titles. We’ve handled clients like Warner Bros., Electronic Arts, and Epic Games, we’ve tested the security of games like DOOM Eternal, Vampire Masquerade: Bloodhunt, and Space Punks and many of our own products have begun public testing and/or use.  

Our three pillars have expanded in offerings from traditional tech and gaming to blockchain services as well, a huge wave that we wanted to get involved in early. The technological challenge blockchain presented was far too interesting for the team to pass up.   

Our goal has always been innovation and growth as a means to increase stability and security, blockchain proficiency was one fantastic opportunity we loved jumping on. As of today we offer penetration testing, load testing, and security stability in blockchain. Thanks to our proficiency and speed, we’ve had the opportunity to work with some incredible teams such as Immutable, Illuvium, and Mythical Games.  

The Future of Cyrex

The future and plans ahead are to continue to grow, continue to support what we already offer. Our plan and hope is to begin offering products and services that the end user can use without us! Increasing their own security and stability almost entirely autonomously.  

As of last year, we entered the world of SaaS and that’s also something we’re keen to focus on. Funnily, in contrast to our beginning and need to go global, our current push is local. To get back on the ground with the people at home around us in Belgium. We’ve scaled up so much but we’ve had more face to face meet ups than ever before!  

Over the last eight years we grew our team to sixty! A long shot from the two and three that used to tackle bug bounties. The team grew to include dedicated marketing teams, sales, legal, and more as we approach bigger projects and clients. Cyrex now stands as a multimillion-dollar company that has worked with almost every single major game developer and publisher in the EU and US. And we acquired a development agency in Lisbon to assist in our growth and software development offerings. We’re supremely proud of the powerhouse our team has become and we’re very excited to see where it goes next.
If you’d like to utilise any of our services from load testing and penetration testing to software development, get in touch today.