Ryan Lasmaili. Image: Vaultree
Cork-based start-up Vaultree is on a mission to eliminate the traditional hurdles associated with encryption to keep enterprises safe.
A common trade-off technology companies face in their operations is that security can often come at the cost of performance and vice versa. With global macroeconomic uncertainty and cybercrime a constant threat, this choice can prove costly whatever leaders decide to prioritise.
One Irish start-up is on a mission to solve this problem and transform the way enterprises use and protect their data at the same time.
Founded on a dairy farm in 2020 by Ryan Lasmaili, Tilo Weigandt, Shaun McBrearty and Maxim Dressler, Vaultree is a cybersecurity start-up developing a software development kit that enables organisations of any type to benefit from fully functional data-in-use encryption.
This means that Vaultree software, a result of “major cryptographic breakthroughs” according to CEO Lasmaili, allows the processing of fully encrypted data without server-side decryption and without complex intermediaries or noticeable delays in data processing – a feat that he says has been “unparalleled” up to now.
“Now companies can forget about security versus performance issues and keep their data safe all the time, sticking to their tech stack and database, maintaining their code and SQL syntax, going with the flow and working the way they have always worked … but fully encrypted, and all at scale!” he told SiliconRepublic.com.
Democratising data security
By the time Lasmaili co-founded Vaultree with the others, they had already been working on fine-tuning the mathematically complex algorithms that give life to the technology for almost a decade.
“We started with a strong desire to democratise data security. To us, people should have the right to keep their data safe and technology is the only way,” he said.
Vaultree’s tech has not gone unnoticed. Soon after it was established, the start-up raised seed funding of $3.3m in November 2021. Then in December 2022, it announced the close of a $12.8m Series A funding round led by Molten Ventures.
The high-potential cybersecurity start-up was also selected for the European Innovation Council accelerator following a “highly competitive” selection process that saw more than 1,000 companies apply and only 78 make the cut.
“This is a testament to our team’s hard work and a step closer to disarming data breaches and cyberattacks on a global scale,” Lasmaili said.
“We’re talking about fully functional data-in-use encryption that empowers enterprises with a user-friendly, simple-to-integrate and fully scalable solution without all the hurdles usually associated with encryption.”
Vaultree’s plug-and-play offering means that there is no need for cryptographers, intermediaries such as APIs and plugins or change of data architecture. “No one will need to access to your decrypted data – not your cloud nor your database providers, not even Vaultree,” Lasmaili explained.
This has the potential to immensely benefit large privacy-aware and tech-driven enterprises, especially the ones in highly regulated industries such as finance, health, insurance, HR and legal, that use large databases.
A new benchmark for encryption
Lasmaili said that the ultimate goal is to bring Vaultree to a point where organisations using its technology will have the confidence to tell customers that even if their data is stolen there is no problem because it is encrypted.
He also hopes the software will makes life easy for security departments.
“We want to simplify CISOs’ lives: forget data loss, PR nightmares, hefty fines and market devaluation. We want to scale our solution significantly and make companies’ databases a safe place,” Lasmaili said.
“An encrypted tomorrow will unlock the potential of encrypted data and enable the impossible, rendering breaches and leaks powerless and irrelevant.”
Earlier this year, Vaultree appointed former Twitter CISO Rinki Sethi to its board of directors.
Sethi brings decades of security and technology leadership expertise, working with various companies such as Ebay, Intuit, Palo Alto Networks and IBM. Some of her most recent roles include being a VP and CISO for Rubrik in 2019 and with Twitter until January 2022.
Now focused on expanding its team and doubling down on research and patent registrations, Vaultree is looking at Europe and the US as primary markets due to their tech affinity, regulations and privacy awareness of consumers.
“However, we don’t possess any geographical boundaries and can serve any market and any enterprise,” Lasmaili added.
“With a user-friendly, simple-to-integrate and fully scalable solution without all the hurdles usually associated with encryption, our goal is to make this technology the new benchmark.”
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