Grad Profiles highlight the personal and professional stories of Founder Institute Graduates from across the globe.
This profile on CipherPoint, a Graduate of the Denver Founder Institute, was written by Emma Tzeng. Co-Founded by Michael Fleck, CipherPoint's software provides transparent encryption key management to enterprise SharePoint environments.
The Denver Founder Institute is now accepting applications to their Summer 2012 Semester. If you could benefit from expert training and feedback to launch a technology company, apply today.
As a collective human race, we acknowledge and accept, begrudgingly, that personal security is a pressing issue. We lock our car doors, install sophisticated alarm systems in our homes, and safeguard our possessions - all in the name of self-protection. So why should the virtual realm be any different?
CipherPoint, an advanced security software that provides transparent encryption key management to enterprise SharePoint environments with multi-server farms, understands the growing need for safe, secure online data storage.
“The state of information security in many organizations is, let’s face it, woeful,” the company writes on its official blog. “For determined hackers and attackers, it really is like shooting fish in a barrel.”
Statistics from the Open Security Foundation’s Dataloss Database indicate that an estimated 903 incidents occurred last year alone in which personal online data was compromised. In 2012, 240 separate accounts of online security breaches have already been reported.
CipherPoint complements Microsoft SharePoint, an enterprise IT management system that allows employees to store personal information and collaborate with colleagues on projects. Because SharePoint databases typically contain sensitive information, CipherPoint improves the technology by encrypting certain content and protecting it against unauthorized access.
To date, SharePoint owns over 125 million licenses for more than 65,000 businesses, making it the market leader in enterprise collaboration software. As the first provider of transparent content encryption solutions for the SharePoint platform, CipherPoint is positioned to benefit from an expansive, relatively young market.
Currently, the software company offers three products for enterprise solutions, CipherPointKM, CipherPoint SP Enterprise, and CiperPointSP. CipherPoint KM provides advanced key management and administration servers running the CipherPoint SP Enterprise software, which delivers transparent encryption for confidential content. CiperPointSP encrypts content stored on a single SharePoint server and helps organizations comply with compliance regulations such as state data breach notification laws.
In addition to its software offerings, CipherPoint also provides structured security assessments for organizations to measure risk and brainstorm action steps.
CipherPoint allows users to demo its software for a trial period and offers bundle packages to enterprises who wish to incorporate the software into its already existing IT infrastructure.
Based in Austin, Texas, the seven-person startup was founded by Woody Shea and Michael Fleck. Both possess over 15 years of IT security software experience and tons of passion for building safer, more secure workplaces.
Clearly, their expertise and passions have helped them carry CipherPoint from a single idea to a fully functional product garnering a continuously expanding user base.
The company is currently generating six-figure revenues from direct sales and distribution partnerships. In December 2011, CipherPoint was recognized as one out of five most promising startups at the Rice Alliance IT and Web Venture Forum. And just last month, the startup signed an agreement with Idera, a leading provider of Microsoft software products with a global reach of over 10,000 customers, to utilize and distribute its encryption technology to an even wider user base.
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