Did you know? It costs only $15 to get your data off your smartphone. And there’s a high probability your email could be floating about the dark web right now. Given how dependent we are on mobile devices, and how many mundane transactions take place on the Internet, there’s little surprise on how vulnerable our digital identities truly are. That’s why its contingent on each of us to build our own safety – that’s what entrepreneur Aditya Narang believes, and is aiming to provide through Safehouse Technologies.

Safehouse Technologies, located in New Delhi and Tel Aviv, is focused on protecting people – by providing multi-device security for endpoints, users, enterprises and governments. Narang and his Israeli cofounder Liad Herman started Safehouse Technologies in stealth mode in 2016. Narang had been working in Israel as a cyber defence security consultant where he crossed paths with Herman. The duo had worked on multiple military defence security projects, aimed at safeguarding military assets and largescale enterprises. What they realized was nothing of this level of sophistication was available to the lay man. “Everyday, we’re leaving a bigger and complex digital footprint, and securing this footprint is absolutely essential. Having worked in intelligence, and that too in Israel, I have seen firsthand how sophisticated cyber attacks can be. Civilians aren’t equipped well enough to ward off these attacks, and that’s what we aim to do,” explains Narang.

The company is a software solutions company that provides end-to-end security. The team has developed a cloud platform which channels and screens all Internet traffic of its users. Bodyguard, the proprietary app developed by the company – whose latest version was launched in June 2020 – has enhanced AI capabilities, high levels of encryption and privacy. It is considered the world’s fastest VPN, according to a company statement. Currently, Bodyguard is available in over 5,000 stores in India, mainly Reliance Retail and Jio Stores where Safehouse Technologies’ products occupy a 90% store share. Since launch in 2019, the platform has 500,000 users. In order to empower individuals more strategically, Narang and his team are working with Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and telcos in India to provide these secure services at the router level.

2020 was widely regarded a ‘bumper year’ for hackers owing to the unplanned and rapid move to unsecure home networks. The first few months of the pandemic saw a spike in cyberattacks, phishing campaigns as organisations scrambled to provide remote security provisions for the multitude of employees working from home. Narang says, “Beyond a point, every user must find his own ways to safeguard his digital footprint and keep a watch on his online activities. This was especially evident during 2020, and this is also when we saw a spike in signups on our platform.”

Given the dizzying number of networks, endpoints and devices a single person has access to, it’s virtually impossible to manage the quantum of threats without the help of AI. At Safehouse Technologies, AI is used in various ways – a Neural Network to detect and prevent threats in real time, and by running AI tools on website metadata. The second approach allows the company to scan a website URL, length of characters, find out when the URL was created and run relevance analysis tests. For instance, if a user receives a message from a suspicious URL, the AI immediately scans it and flags off the threat to the user. This was the same methodology that Safehouse Technologies deployed in Israel for PayPal users, averting a largescale phishing attack. In addition, the team uses NLP to detect and protect users from online toxicity like bullying, abuse, theft and harassment – as Narang says, “Cyber attacks don’t always have a sole financial motive.”

To generate more awareness of exercising safe cyber practices, Safehouse Technologies has also set up a microsite called amisecure.in – all you have to do is type in your email address to see the origin of leak of your personal data. It could be from a host of apps, websites or services a user could have utilized at some point in time. Due to inadequate safety measures, data of millions of customers get leaked on to the dark web, giving hackers a lot of ammunition to orchestrate their next attack. However, Safehouse Technologies deploys its bots on these dark web forums and sites to constantly scan conversations and discussions, to understand patterns of the hackers and possible attack vectors, and sends all this data back to the cloud for further action. This information is used to point out to users on the microsite where and how their data got leaked. In addition, this information is crucial to the development team at Safehouse Technologies to build fail-safes and contingencies to thwart cyber attackers.

Equipping users with tools to protect themselves is one part of the solution – stronger interventions by lawmakers need to be enforced so every citizen has the means to legally protect his data from bad actors.