German IT and cybersecurity company q.beyond has been operating in Riga for six years, building a team of more than 100 professionals and making the city an increasingly important part of the group's international operations. From Riga, the company delivers a wide range of IT and cybersecurity services, while its local Security Operations Centre provides around-the-clock protection for clients across Europe. As part of its international growth strategy, q.beyond is expanding its activities in Latvia and sees Riga as a key location for future growth in cybersecurity and digital innovation.
Interview with Pāvels Ignatovičs, Sales and Business Development Manager at q.beyond Riga
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q.beyond combines expertise in cloud, cybersecurity, AI and managed IT services. How would you describe the company's strengths, and what kinds of challenges do you help customers solve every day?
That list covers it pretty well, but each of those boxes opens up into a lot more once you look closer.
On cybersecurity we do the whole journey. We advise, we get companies compliant, we build the setup and then we run it around the clock from our SOC in Riga. On AI, we help organisations put it to real use in a way that stays reliable and keeps them on the right side of the EU AI Act. There's the Microsoft and SAP world too, the modern workplace, application management, keeping a client's IT alive with 24/7 and on-call support. And cloud, which these days is mostly about migration, running things properly and, more and more, sovereign European cloud. We can offer that last one because we own our data centres in Germany.
If I had to say what we do in one sentence: we operate, secure, comply and modernise our clients' IT, with the speed and innovation you get in Latvia and the reliability you expect from German engineering.
The other half of the answer is the people. We've built a team of more than a hundred here that can stand on its own, and that already means a lot to me. But we're never working alone. There are around a thousand colleagues and the experience of well over a thousand client projects sitting behind us in Germany. What clients tell us they value most is getting all of this from one partner, from the first strategy talk through the transformation and then the boring but critical part, keeping it running every day.
Cybersecurity has become one of the biggest priorities for businesses across Europe. Why is it no longer just an IT issue, and what standards, certifications and best practices should organisations look for when choosing a trusted cybersecurity partner?
Not long ago, cybersecurity was something you left to the IT department. That time is gone. The main thing that changed it is regulation. With NIS2, DORA, the Cyber Resilience Act and standards like ISO 27001, security has turned into a legal responsibility and not only a technical task. And here's the part many managers still don't fully feel, these rules put the responsibility at the very top of the company. If something goes wrong, it's the leadership that has to answer for it. That alone moved the topic onto the board's table.
So the real question becomes, how much security is enough? There isn't one answer that fits everyone. It depends on the business. You begin by understanding what really matters inside the company, what you simply cannot afford to lose, who is responsible for what, and only then do you decide which protections make sense. And you keep revisiting it, because the people attacking you never stop changing their methods.
This is where I'd say we're different. We know the regulatory side well and we have the certified people to back that up, but we don't start with tools. We start by looking at the business. Then our implementation team does the hard work of turning that into something real, and underneath all of it our SOC in Riga is running, 24 hours a day.
Attacks don't wait for Monday morning, so we don't either. That's really the point of a SOC. Someone is watching at three on a Sunday morning as well.
If you're choosing a partner, that's more or less the checklist: real certifications, people who understand the regulations, a team that can build and not just advise, and a true 24/7 operation behind you. A nice slide deck is not the same as someone defending your business at night.