Digital Sharks
Ever seen the movie Back To The Future II with Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd?
Stupid question, I guess. Anyway, that film was one of the early examples of the Internet of Things (IoT) and augmented reality (AR) at play. In that world, set in the year 2015, hoverboards, robot gas stations, drones walking dogs, and the holographic digital shark were chic. Apart from Stanley Kubrick’s seminal movie 2001 released in 1968, it is — in my mind at least (though I’m no Roger Ebert) — one of the greatest examples of technology on show before the technology was widely available.
But let’s get back to the present day, 2020. I suppose Robert Zemeckis and the genius auteur from the Bronx were cinematic visionaries in that respect because a damn high-percentage of the stuff they showed us on the big screen has come true: the IoT and AI are becoming more integrated into our lives by the day and will, no doubt, end up as services which we can’t do without.
That’s why we have to make sure we secure them, especially the IoT.
Can you imagine a scenario where our smart fridges, driverless cars, TVs, toys, and wearables decide to rebel against us, act out a revolution à la October 1917 and enslave us as the new proletariat human underclass?
It’s not even worth thinking about. Yet it could happen. Okay, maybe that’s stretching reality to the furthest reaches of believability but there are menaces out there.
Currently, though — and this is a good thing — there are countless startups in AI and other areas of hard tech that have their own solutions for securing the IoT against cybersecurity infractions. QC, too, is seeing more companies establishing themselves, realizing a niche today will be a worldwide industry tomorrow.
Crypta Labs, founded in London in 2014, is an award-winning IoT Security startup that is developing a quantum-based encryption chip. The startup’s technology utilizes
‘the quantum properties of light from a mobile device’s lens and the light sensors to detect the photons beams and we count these photons to generate a random number.’
Crypta Labs
The startup’s main customer base will be targeted towards a few sectors:
— Defense
— Healthcare
— Automated driving
— Mobile technologies
The key to all this, however, is QSecure, ‘the world’s first quantum-seeded encrypted mobile phone using [the startup’s own] quantum technology’.
Overseeing all this is Crypta Labs’ CEO and founder Joe Luong. Having spent the last two decades and a half in finance and technology leadership roles, Luong is well placed to drive the startup forward with its ambitious project. An accountant by profession, before Crypta Labs he founded children’s savings aggregator iProsper Media.
‘QSecure is a secure communication device developed in close cooperation with the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), Oxford University and Singapore University to implement Quantum Random Number Generation on a mobile phone.’
With more than $4M raised according to Crunchbase data in a mixture of equity and debt financing from institutional investors, it seems Crypta Labs has money to spend on developing its key products. Additionally, earlier this year, the startup was accepted into the London Mayor’s International Business Programme in the ‘Financial, Business Services & Technology’ category. The program provides London startups access to workshops and mentoring. This goes along with the other accolades it has won in its six years of operation.
As covered in a recent piece on Qrypt I wrote, the quantum-based cybersecurity market is growing steadily. But it will, undeniably, take companies like Crypta Labs and others like it time to develop the market and a viable customer base.
Whatever the outcome, TQD will be there to see the seismic changes happen.
