A quote by Stephane Nappo, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and few minutes of cyber-incident to ruin it,” accurately emphasizes the significance of data security in the technological era.
An organization cannot defend itself against data breach operations without a cybersecurity program, making it an easy target for cybercriminals. These criminals’ strategies are becoming more advanced than traditional cyber defenses, so business leaders can no longer rely only on out-of-the-box cybersecurity solutions like antivirus software and firewalls.
Understanding the importance of data privacy drove Greg Taylor to start Sertainty Corporation, a company that builds privacy intelligence directly into data to make data privacy guaranteed, demonstrable, and managed.
Sertainty Corporation offers advanced technology that embeds a data file with the necessary safeguards and management modules to defend against unwanted access.
A Man with a Mission
Early in his entrepreneurial career, Greg founded Taylor Associates, a professional search and recruiting company that revolutionized data processing. This company inspired him to start Dataman Services, a data processing systems analysis, software development, and consulting services organization geared towards the very early stages of cybersecurity and data protection through proper software development and implementation of the appropriate standards and procedures company-wide.
Upon founding SertaintyOne Corporation, the pivot of Sertainty Corporation, he brought together the founding team that now ensures exceptional development and commercialization of self-governing data.
Early on, Greg and his team were confronted with doubt about their ability to deliver on their promises. He remembers comments like, “Technology is not that far advanced.” The challenge then became to convince these organizations to conduct the proper due diligence and invest the time and resources to see that Sertainty technology could truly protect their information by building privacy intelligence directly into the data. While this skepticism led to resourcing constraints and challenges at Sertainty for a period, they overcame these hurdles by patenting their customizable solution in the US, Japan, and Korea and building valuable partnerships that further validated their approach.
Having dealt with incredulity and doubt, Greg now advises young entrepreneurs to have faith in themselves. After working in investment banking for over 14 years, Greg has observed that everyone underestimates the value of financial, family, and community support. To be a successful entrepreneur, you must be willing to take risks.
Greg shares, “You must have a special kind of grit to survive, much less succeed. You will get told no 300 times, but it takes one yes to begin down a path that could change your life.”
Guiding Principles, Shaping Work Culture
Every business has its own set of values that influence how it operates. The mission at Sertainty revolves around the Zero-Trust Principle; never trust and always verify. This principle means no device or user will ever be trusted, and a verification process is always required.
As deep-tech cyber-innovators, the Sertainty team’s mission is to offer breakthrough self-protecting-data technology. Its cutting-edge DevSecOps teams can deploy a proactive and self-mitigating data-centric strategy that assures the safety and sustainability of the converging OT and IT environments.
At Sertainty, they package and distribute their main product in a Software Development Kit (SDK). Their SDK includes all the Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) needed to build a secure Self-Protected Data file.
In short, this SDK will help customers build highly secure applications for protecting data.
Leaving a Mark in the Information Security Niche
With Sertainty, clients and partners can create a competitive differentiator with customers and regulators who want more than data privacy promises. Establishing and retaining customer trust and taking a sustainable approach to data privacy regulations are of the utmost importance for businesses worldwide.
Verified by industry leader Veracode, Sertainty has discovered and patented a way to embed its programming language and executable code so that “ones and zeros” are indistinguishable by the best hackers.
When tested, the Sertainty patented Data Privacy Platform received the highest score possible: VL5, 100% in Static Application Security Testing (SAST) and Manual Penetration Testing (MPT).
Developing Versatile Solutions
Technology is critical to the growth of practically every industry, progressively playing a more significant part in our society, from cybersecurity to agriculture and farming.
Sertainty recently received patents for its intelligent cipher transfer object (ICTO) in Japan, Korea, and the United States. One of its data privacy platform partners is Texas State University’s CIEDAR program. The program develops smart cities integrated with solar farms, autonomous vehicles, and smart homes. While progressing toward human advancement, Sertainty ensures their data and processes are safe with self-governing data on the backend.
A Change for the Better
Technology is ever-changing, and one must keep up with it to stay relevant in the tech industry. Many businesses in data assurance aren’t beholden to an industry-standard instead of focusing on marketing to gain new customers. There needs to be a better-structured standard of operation for data assurance. When there is a breach, these businesses face no repercussions and give no clear roadmap to clients on how to ensure that a data breach won’t happen again.
Sertainty believes the best way to protect valuable data is to have its platforms tested and graded by industry experts like Veracode and keep its B2B clients up to date on the latest in data advancements and practices. Educating your clients enables them to make informed decisions regarding their valuable data.
Greg adds, “When they know your business has been judged according to an industry-standard, it increases their confidence in your ability. It’s time for businesses to stop keeping their clients in the dark and work together to shine a light on how they can make better, actionable decisions around data protection.”
Going Above and Beyond
At Sertainty, when they look into the future, they are looking six months to three years from now. In the cybersecurity world, three years is a long time. The company is working towards a public offering and evaluating future partnerships with renowned Wall Street firms that could represent Sertainty in a prospective M&A transaction.
Also, Greg predicts, “Over the next 18 to 24 months, we will have tremendous pressure on us to sell the company. I say this because of the increased interest we have already seen in Sertainty, and I believe that will only grow. We are getting traction in these areas, and the company is becoming more valuable.”
Concerning its internal growth, the company will continue to advance the capabilities of self-governing and self-protecting data. Many organizations are looking to adopt the Zero-Trust model to solve data security needs. However, they forget that it isn’t a cookie-cutter security model. Instead, it’s a methodology that needs to evolve consistently. The ability to accommodate those fast adaptations makes Sertainty stand out in the Zero-Trust cybersecurity industry.
To Budding Entrepreneurs – Get a Foothold
“The advice I would give to any entrepreneur is this; if you’ve got a vision and you believe that you are called to that vision — and I do mean called, something that’s burning inside of you and you cannot say no — and you’re willing to risk everything you’ve got, then go for it!”
Finally, Greg also adds that one should never burn a bridge as you never know when that relationship will come back and be beneficial to you and your company. The team is critical. You can have the best technology on the planet and millions of dollars invested in it, but if you do not have a 100% committed team that shares your vision and passion, you will fail.
