Digital Security is the topic du jour when it comes to the digital world. It seems like almost every week Gmail, or Target, or Home Depot is announcing millions of pieces of data have been stolen by digital thieves. The problem lies in the fact that users have culturally adjusted to the idea of letting businesses store personal data about them (address, credit card number, purchasing habits, phone numbers, emails, passwords) more quickly than those businesses have taken to securing said data. It is almost inevitable that companies – retail, banks, eCommerce, anything consumer-facing, really – overhaul their security, and Paris-based Cryptosense has already begun working with some of them to show them where the holes in their security system lie.
The startup, which announced this week a 700,000€ seed round of funding from Elaia Partners, currently works with 2 of the top 5 European banks, according to co-founder & CEO Graham Steel, simulating breaches in their security. The startup started as an academic project that Steel was working on in the UK; however, academic obligations to teach distracted Steel form his work, and so he came to the French R&D institute INRIA to pursue his project further.
The company’s goal isn’t to automate White Hat Security – there will always be increasingly creative ways to hack security systems, and an automated system will always be one step behind; however, today, there are tedious tasks involved in checking digital security, and Cryptosense wants to leave the complicated stuff to the internal security team, while automating the time-consuming, low-level checks.
Steel says that, beyond the banking sector, the retail sector is clearly in need of a security overhaul; however, security for the Internet of Things has become increasingly necessary, and the most recent iOS8 developments with respect to payment, health, and personal (photo) data will make increased security a must across not only your smartphone, but anything your smartphone plans to communicate with.