Adam Ghetti, founder of our portfolio company Social Fortress and an expert in security, publicly presented Social Fortress for the first time at this week’s TechCrunch Disrupt Conference. I met Adam and Social Fortress at the first Flashpoint Demo Day in New York earlier this year; ff became the only institutional investor and I joined the Board in May. (I hope you’ll join us at the next Flashpoint Demo Day this Thursday.) We think this is an exceptional company. Video and more details here.
Adam reminded us all just how completely “out of control” we are of our own data and digital lives. While we believe our online identities are secure, everyone is hackable—including the CEO of Foxconn and the Iranian military. Almost everything we do online is publically available and can be stored indefinitely. An adolescent can post embarrassing photos or comments on Facebook that can come back to haunt him or her years later. An innocuous message to a friend to notify them where you left your keys is effectively available to the whole world.
In the past, consumers had two solutions: don’t post at all, or hide behind walls. Since the upside of sharing is so significant, behavior is not going to change for most of us. And walls are no longer the solution—especially in a world where the worst of us “know how to climb”.
Social Fortress has created a solution that encrypts and protects your data wherever it goes, from the moment you hit submit, send, or post. The beauty of Social Fortress’s design is its seamlessness. Leaving the user experience completely intact, Social Fortress does its magic as your data is on its way to and from the cloud. So if you write an email mentioning where you left your keys, your email recipient can read it, but anyone hacking into your email only sees a string of encrypted characters.
Adam briefly also mentioned Skeleton Key, a password solution on steroids. It brings password management and protection down to the device level, meaning you can only break my password if you were doing it from my device. Further, if you steal my phone, I can disable that device immediately without complicating the rest of my device stack. In the case that somebody does break into an account and change your password, you will be immediately notified and have the ability to instantly reset every password Skeleton Key manages. So you’ll never become Mat Honan.
Thanks to Matt Joyce for help drafting this
