Aditya Narang, the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Safehouse Technologies, recently sat down with NewsX for exclusive interview.
Aditya says Safehouse Techologies is a military grade cybersecurity platform, based on a cloud system. “We’re mobile first, was what we said. Our latest product, Bodyguard, protects mobile phones, the users mobile gets added to the cloud, and then we are able to secure it. Mobile is just the beginning of our journey though, we will soon be able to protect any internet connected device.”
‘Bodyguard’ is Safehouse’s flagship product. “As soon as a user clicks on the button in the Bodyguard app, you are completely secure. You don’t need a scan, or any update, you’re protected in real time. We provide a military grade encryption. Even if you’re using a public internet, your still completely safe. Even on a passive level, if you aren’t using the device, and someone tries to hack in, with Bodyguard, you’ll be safe.”
He breaks down the cyber-security sector in India, and explains to us how cyber-security companies fall into 3 categories, “There’s three main users- enterprises, government, and consumers. Consumer space is where there are very well known companies like Norton, QuickHeal etc. The government has certain companies already from whom they procure their needs, and the enterprise space is difficult for any new start-up to break into, as they have contracts lasting 3-5 years.”
India’s new digital revolution played a big part in Safehouse’s decision to focus on the mobile security sector, according to Aditya. “With over 300 million net users due to mobile phone in the last few years, and over 80% of the website traffic being from mobile phones. At the same time, we don’t really have any good protection or technologies present in India at the moment, leaving us completely vulnerable. Cyber threats are increasingly being targeted toward mobile, for example last year’s Agent Smith attack.”
He feels that new telecom providers and services entering the Indian market has helped to raise awareness about the importance of and need for mobile security. “When I started this journey, in 2016, awareness was still very low. It’s a lot better now, with the advent of new providers of telecom and other services. India went from being ranked as number 16th, to no. 1, in a very short time, and that really put things into perspectives. Our reliance on mobile phone has been increasing year on year. The awareness is growing, but it is still a long way.”
He says India is extremely vulnerable on the cyber-security front, and calls on both the public and private sector to cooperate in order to fix this problem. “What happened in India was that people first got exposed to internet through their mobile phones. In western countries, this first happened through PCs and laptops, and so they were aware of things like anti-viruses and malware etc. But in India, where awareness came through only the mobile side of things, people are still not in the know about these things, and that’s why awareness is still very low.”
Aditya also lauded the Prime Minister’s efforts on this front, calling him ‘extremely progressive’ on the matter. “We’ve got a new policy coming from the government, which will really help. At the same time, we’ve also recently banned many Chinese apps, which is really a very good message being sent by our government. It is the message by them that they will not tolerate these kinds of intrusions from hostile nations.”