Introducing MERENA, Inc.: National Cybersecurity Center’s New Spinoff Empowers All Individuals to Take Control of Their Own Online Safety
Since 2016, NCC has been at the forefront of cyber resiliency, uniting minds in industry, government, and academia to help organizations and individuals understand and reduce their cyber risk.
Today, this knowledge and support is extended to all citizens with MERENA, Inc., a company that the NCC incubated for the last year and now is being spun-out into its own independent organization. With this approach, NCC will preserve its nonprofit status, while MERENA, Inc. will be a public benefit corporation (PBC). Both will be aligned in their work toward building a more cyber-resilient society with a combined vision and separate execution, governance, and operating plans.
We’re not the first to spin off a company this year (neither in the AI market nor the broader market), and we’re excited to capitalize on the strategic objectives a spinoff will present, most notably, scaling our cybersecurity mission to serve all citizens with MERENA, Inc.’s agentic-AI solution, MERENA. Available now, MERENA provides individuals with cyber-safety alerts, interactive solution sessions through an AI-powered personal cyber advisor and tools — all delivered in easy-to-understand, step-by-step interactions.
It’s these intuitive and straightforward interactions that set MERENA apart. For the past 30 years, the cybersecurity industry has tailored its solutions and outbound communications to a technical and corporate-focused audience, largely ignoring an underserved market of 160 million individuals. MERENA cuts through the jargon and makes cybersecurity awareness, knowledge, guidance and solutions accessible to anyone, regardless of their level of technical understanding. The goal is a more cyber-resilient society comprised of cyber-confident individuals that can understand, manage, and mitigate their own online risk.
As you may know, MERENA, Inc. completed beta testing in the first quarter of this year and launched the free solution nationally, with thousands of customers already using its cyber-safety alerts. Over the next year, we expect MERENA’s user base to swell to tens of thousands more. In support of this growth, MERENA, Inc.’s leadership team intends to raise a seed round of financing this summer.
MERENA was developed and incubated here at NCC by a talented group of individuals that will lead the new company, along with an experienced Board of Directors. The initial leadership team is Greg Oslan, CEO and Chairman; Bernadette Maisel, Director of Operations; Rachel Gardner, Director of Product; and Stephen Han, Director of Engineering. Their combined experience will lead MERENA, Inc. to success as it builds a more cyber-resilient society.
Although there’s always more work ahead, this is a time of great excitement. In under a year, we’ve proven that there is a market need, we can fill it with MERENA, and we have the users and partners to prove it. We’re proud of what we’ve already accomplished with NCC and now MERENA, Inc., and are energized by the positive impact that MERENA will have on individuals as they navigate their online risk.
