Hypori is already the leading secure virtual mobility provider for zero-footprint data on Bring Your Own Devices being used within the Department of Defense. With backing from GreatPoint Ventures to the tune of $20 million in Series A financing, the company is now poised to expand both within DOD and into new industries, including healthcare and finance, leaders said.
But Hypori’s story is about more than expansion, said CEO Jared Shepard, who recently spun off Hypori Inc. into an independent startup from Intelligent Waves LLC, a defense and intelligence contractor, which he founded. Instead, it’s a way of thinking about mobility and cybersecurity that drastically reduces the risk of large-scale threats and allows data access anywhere from any device operating on any platform.
“We believe the next evolution in mobility is breaking ties to the device,” said Shepard. “What if you could have all of that access to information, all of that capability from the device anywhere, and in a secure fashion that you don’t ever have to worry about replacing it or losing it?”
Want to upgrade your device? No problem. Is the battery dead? Access all your data securely on someone else’s phone, log into Hypori, and you’re back on “your phone” once more.
In the U.S., an estimated 60% of homes have at least one PC, Shepard estimates, but many operate with much less power than they could. Hypori, he said, allows users to access secure data center speeds, bandwidth, computing power, memory and more — regardless of how up to date their device is.
“If you used the Hypori device, you could launch it for television with a keyboard and mouse and have a more powerful PC than most people have at home,” Shepard said. “And now you have a 72-inch monitor.”
If the arrival of laptop computers and cellular phones marked turning points in the world of mobility, breaking ties to the device is the next major step, Shepard said.
A Different Approach to Edge Security
As more government and non-government organizations adopt Bring Your Own Device — or Bring Your Own Approved Device — to work policies, the time is ripe for next-level security solutions, Shepard said. In addition, securing the edge — network-connected computing that takes place outside a cloud environment — has long been cited as a concern among cybersecurity specialists.
For years, IT providers have focused on extending data from a secure data center to the edge and then protecting data while it resides there. As the edge expands to include exponentially smarter mobile devices, the attack surface that needs protection has also expanded, and specialists have scrambled to figure out how to secure it. Hypori takes a whole new approach.
“This drops the need to protect the edge because we take the edge out of the equation,” Shepard said. “The data never leaves the data center. We only empower the edge to interact with the data inside the data center. There is no actual data in transit or at rest, other than simply pixels and telemetry.”
Changing where the data resides removes several security concerns. Since the data can’t be downloaded, it can’t reside on the device and therefore can’t be accessed, even if the device itself is compromised, Shepard said. In addition, bad actors can’t ransom the data because they aren’t in possession of the data.
“It is a virtual access solution that’s more dynamic and more diverse and more secure than anything else that’s offered today,” he said.
For years, tech giants worked to move the desktop environment to mobile devices. Hypori’s approach is to get the mobile environment to work anywhere.
“On a desktop, on a mobile phone, on a laptop, on a tablet, on a PC, or a television, on a kiosk – it doesn’t matter, right?” Shepard said. “If you can enable one common operating system for anybody to access from anywhere and do so in a secure fashion that doesn’t depend upon the security of the edge device? That’s transformational.”
Expanding Within and Beyond DOD
A military veteran, Shepard spent 40 months deployed into combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan where he said he gained a deep understanding of the need for user-friendly systems that can be accessed even under challenging situations. For Hypori, that means planning for users to be able to access data even when the device is out of date or compromised in some way.
“That way, you can get the same cloud-powered user experience from even that edge device that’s already been compromised or is operating poorly, or maybe it’s three or four years old, you get the same level of interaction and capability through Hypori that you would get on a brand-new device inside of the secure environment,” he said.
When Shepard’s services company, Intelligent Waves, acquired the assets of Hypori earlier this spring, he knew the use cases he saw inside DOD could have broader applications.
Hypori is the largest secure mobility solution inside the DOD under the National Security Administration’s Commercial Solutions for Classified Program. But company leaders see growth within the defense and intelligence community as only the beginning. So, Hypori’s next focus will be on expanding to industries with a strong need to protect their IP, communications and the user or patient information.
“We’re growing out our sales team, we’re growing out our leadership team, we’re growing out our development team because we’re going to be able to do the same thing that we’re doing for the Department of Defense for multiple other healthcare, finance, business industry verticals across the world,” Shepard said.
Looking Ahead
Shepard is excited for the possibilities ahead, which include transforming the security of point-of-sale transactions. It would have the potential to eliminate, for example, threats in which bad actors hack into credit card machines or attach data lifters to ATMs.
“You could actually make a point-of-sale interaction so secure that when you swipe the credit card, the actual credit card number never resided on the edge device and only resides inside the secure environment,” Shepard said. “With us, we take the edge out, which means we’re dramatically reducing the size of the footprint that you have to defend actively.”
The partnership with GreatPoint Ventures adds a level of experience, knowledge and access to strategic partners that will strengthen Hypori’s posture as it works to expand, Shepard said.
Founded in 2015, GreatPoint has been involved in the success of several leading companies, including Beyond Meat, Sidecar Health, Skyhawk Therapeutics, Extend, Vim Business, Kinetica and Excision.
“They have that kind of expertise, and they’re going to help us understand, scale and plan effectively to be able to enter those new markets and grow,” Shepard said.