"It's a problem that a lot of people have tried to solve," says CipherApps co-founder Hitesh Tewari, "but it's a difficult nut to crack." Sitting in front of what looks like a normal Google Docs page, he and co-founder Karl Reid are confident that they have found the answer to this particular head-scratcher.
As more businesses begin to take advantage of Google Docs and other online collaboration tools, concerns over the security of those cloud-based documents have naturally increased.
CipherApps though, has created a gateway, or “barrier on the edge of your company’s network”, which means that when using these tools “no data leaves a company without being protected”.
For users there are “no extra passwords involved and no software to download” as they pass through the CipherApps gateway in a “seamless” manner, says Reid, who shows how, as he modifies the Google Doc in front of him the document is encrypted automatically.
“If you add any step to a workflow people are just put off by the product,” he adds, “but this doesn’t affect the user experience at all.”
Should the document fall into the wrong hands, those without approved access will only see an encrypted file.
Spun out from research at Trinity College, Tewari and Reid are now joined by executive chairman, David Shackleton, who brings several years of business and product development expertise in to help ease the transition.
Cloud
Tewari had previously ventured into the commercial space with a 2006 "wifi-offloading" project which was "ahead of its time unfortunately", while a password-storing smartphone product didn't take off as "the market was saturated".
However, it was during the development of the latter that Tewari and Reid hit upon the idea for CipherApps. “We came from an encryption background and while I wanted to use Google Docs I didn’t want to put all my research into Google’s cloud,” says Tewari.
The pair saw that such collaboration tools, while presenting enormous opportunities also came with inherent security problems when used in the work environment. Compliance and regulatory standards surrounding the storage and use of corporate data loom large over companies, often closing off the possibility of signing up for such cloud-based services in the first place.
CipherApps, says Shackleton, provides “a simple bridge” to ensure the data is safe from harm and fully compliant with privacy legislation. “At the root of our product is the growing trend for businesses using cloud collaboration services such as Google Docs and Office 365,” says Tewari.
The issue for Google though, says Shackleton, is that its enterprise sales team is “not winning business because of encryption, whereas this”, he says, pointing towards the document on Reid’s MacBook, “can help change that”.
Some are beginning to make the leap though, with the City of Boston last year deciding to swap Microsoft email and word processing tools for Gmail and Google Docs respectively while also bringing in Google's cloud service for storing documents across 20,000 employees, making savings of €200,000 in the process.
Pilot
Should more industries and public institutions follow Boston's lead though, they'll need to be assured their data is safe which is where the trio hope CipherApps can find an instant market. Users can register for the service, or in the case of enterprise clients, the company would install "an actual box on premises", says Tewari.
Working from the start-up focused Wayra Academy located in O2's central Dublin offices since September, Shackleton says they're soon to begin work with a pilot client in the "credit card processing space" as they seek to refine the CipherApps offering. Having already received two rounds of funding from Enterprise Ireland worth over €330,000, as well as €40,000 in funds from Wayra when they won a place at the academy, Tewari says the next six months will see more staff and the search for further funds ramped up. Much of that funding, Tewari reveals, will be funnelled towards using the tool across other platforms such as "Facebook, Twitter, and Dropbox".
