William McCormick
ExecutiveBiz recently spoke with Jared Shepard, CEO of Hypori, for its most recent Executive Spotlight interview detailing the Series A investment from GreatPoint Ventures, the benefits that investment will have on the company as well as bring-your-own-device (BYOD) environments, the demand for zero-trust architecture in the federal sector and Hypori’s future in 2021 and beyond.
“Over the next 12 months, we will probably double to triple in size from an employee account standpoint. Our current pipeline implies we will see year over year growth that exceeds many of the most aggressive growth companies.”
You can read the full Executive Spotlight with Jared Shepard below:
ExecutiveBiz: Congrats on the series A investment from GreatPoint Ventures! What can you tell us about the background of how the investment came to `Hypori and the major benefits for the company and its customers?
“We picked GreatPoint Ventures because they bring more to the table than just a checkbook. GreatPoint can provide us with experience, access, and mentorship, which will help us grow into not just a larger business but realize our potential as a company.
I really like Ray Lane, managing partner at Greatpoint, because besides his amazing history with Oracle and as a venture capitalist, he was the first guy I spoke to in the venture world who not only understood my vision of the company but went further.
He said, ‘I think you can take this much further than you think’ and that was important to me. Ray Lane, Ashok Krishnamurthi, and Andrew Pearlman built GPV and chose to not just invest in the idea of Hypori, but they are investing in me and my team personally.
We are becoming a team with the venture group rather than simply taking their checkbook and receiving money. Ray has personally joined our Board of directors and is taking a very active part in helping us be prepared for the explosive growth we see in front of us.
I talk to him regularly and having that kind of mentorship and leadership will help Hypori achieve the velocity necessary to dominate in the market. We want to be more than just a successful company. We want to be a revolutionary company that changes how mobility is considered.”
ExecutiveBiz: Along with the news, it was suggested that 85% of organizations have enabled BYOD environments because of tech advancements and the recent pandemic. What are some of the most influential ways that BYOD trends have influenced and benefited the federal workforce?
“Regarding the federal workforce, in many ways, we are almost a no-brainer. What is fascinating is the size and scope of who needs to use our kind of service. Our ability to deliver a wholly functional yet secure capability to interact with data is uniquely important post-COVID.
Before the pandemic, if you went to a government office and told them how to enable 80% of the government workforce to work from home, they would have laughed you out of the room. Nowadays, they are desperately searching for ways to do just that in a secure and scalable manner.
For the Government, having tested secure and certified technologies is critical. We are currently an NSA Commercial Solutions for Classified listed product, certified by the National Information Assurance Partnership, and much more.
We are currently the largest NSA accredited mobility provider in the DOD, and we are excited that Hypori is being considered by the Department of Defense to enable their significant Bring Your Own Approved Device (BYOAD) requirements. Of their current capabilities under consideration, we are the only NIAP accredited, truly scalable platform that prevents data-at-rest or data-in-transit and is fully accessible on iPhone, Android, and PC devices.
We can do all this through our proprietary virtual mobile streaming operating system, empower users for a fully secure environment but we don’t need access or control of the host device. Bottom line? More security, more privacy, less infrastructure.
The majority of BYOD is done with mobile device management. That means, by definition, it has to manage your mobile device. That is problematic if you have privacy issues or if you want to have access to multiple security environments.
Also, it’s a challenge for government and businesses that mobile device management forces them to inherit liability for employee behavior on an edge device. Adoption rates are also a challenge because who wants the government to control their personal device? If you use Mobile Device Management (MDM), that is exactly what you are doing.
We flip that paradigm. We assume that the edge device could be compromised, and we do not extend any data to the edge. Instead, we enable you to interact with data in a way that makes it seem as if it is on your device, but you cannot damage it, download it, or corrupt it. Oh, by the way, I do not need any access or visibility into your personal device. Hypori doesn’t need control of your personal device to protect the data, so there are no privacy issues.
Our technology scales as well. Beyond being a cloud-based technology accessible from the most popular Cloud platforms, from your personal device you can have access to multiple security environments. MDM can only give you access to your personal environment, and one secure (business) environment.
With Hypori, you could have environments for companies, projects, workgroups, and more. All from that single personal device, with no privacy issues, and no data at risk on the device or in transit. We are a true Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA).”
Visit ExecutiveBiz.com’s Executive Spotlight Page to learn more about the most significant leaders of consequence to the government contracting (GovCon) and federal sectors and their experiences driving growth, new business and capabilities in the fiercely competitive federal landscape.
ExecutiveBiz: With recent data breaches and cybersecurity becoming more significant than ever, how is the demand for zero trust architecture technologies and advancements in 5G and data protection creating new opportunities for Hypori to drive innovation in its capabilities?
“It’s almost as if zero trust architectures (ZTA) and 5G advancements were built for us. 5G high-speed, low latency improves the way virtualization works. The idea that you have virtual access to an operating system across the 5G network, especially if you are using AWS Wavelength or other 5G enabled Cloud, you are talking about only a few milliseconds of latency and access to a virtual operating system with Cloud data center-like speed and compute.
That data center-like speed means I could make the power of mobile devices irrelevant because I can provide faster, more powerful capability on the edge. Think about it… A virtual device accessible from any platform, running at the speed of servers, with the bandwidth of the cloud datacenters? It is almost not fair to other capabilities!!
When it comes to ZTA, Hypori is a no-data-at-rest encrypted streaming virtual operating system technology. Meaning not only do we exceed the idea of ZTA, but we even do one thing that ZTA advocates for that we do not believe in; namely, ZTA says you need to have control of and trust in the edge device.
We take the opposite approach. I instead assume that the edge device is always potentially compromised and start operating from that assumption. So, if I do not need to trust the edge device, from the very beginning, I’ve already removed a huge part of the security conundrum that faces industry and the government today.”
ExecutiveBiz: What can we expect from Hypori for the rest of 2021 and beyond as the company continues to cement itself in our sector and develop its capabilities?
“Over the next 12 months, we will probably double to triple in size from an employee account standpoint. Our current pipeline implies we will see year-over-year growth that exceeds many of the most aggressive growth companies.
From a software company standpoint, the idea that we are building out a transformational Software as a Service (SaaS) company is mind-numbing. We can hardly hire people fast enough to handle that level of tremendous growth.
We are truly a disruptive technology, in a time of disruptive technology. When you combine the emerging capabilities of 5G networks and bandwidth, with ZTA technologies like Hypori, we will change the world of edge computing.
We are disruptive because unlike most normal new technology fielding, that adds a new tool or new capability to your enterprise. We can change the way your enterprise functions. We change the way you defend your networks from Cyber threats, Ransomware etc. We enable true real-time always-on control of your edge devices, while enabling you to reduce your edge footprint.
This makes Cybersecurity and data protection more effective and scalable as we reduce the number of physical devices that can interact with your data, we reduce the idea of edge device loss and compromise. We prevent the loss of data on devices due to traditional theft or loss of accountability.
Hypori empowers your employees to have the access and flexibility they need to be more productive to your team, without being a burden to them personally. Again, we are more security, more privacy, more flexibility, less risk, less infrastructure. Who doesn’t need that?”
