IN THE BOARDROOM WITH…MR. STEVE VISCONTI — PRESIDENT & CEO
In The Boardroom With…
Mr. Steve Visconti
President & CEO
SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Thank you for joining us today, Steve. Before discussing Extenua solutions in greater detail, let me share your background and the background of Mr. Federico Simonetti, Extenua’s Chief Technology Officer, Founder and Board Member with our community.
STEVE VISCONTI
PRESIDENT & CEO
Steve Visconti is responsible for Extenua’s strategic direction and day-to-day business operations. As CEO, Mr. Visconti brings to Extenua over 25 years’ experience in both domestic and international business development, sales, marketing, and management success. Steve’s leadership experience includes top technology companies and start-up ventures including Cisco Systems, Inc., Airespace, Ascend, Chipcom, and Banyan Systems. His understanding of technology and market conditions, together with the ability to lead high growth companies and build shareholder value, has contributed to his proven performance record and several successful start-up successes.
FEDERICO SIMONETTI
CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, FOUNDER, BOARD MEMBER
Federico is a serial entrepreneur and hard-core software designer and developer. In his career he has founded several companies in Europe and in the US, growing them and bringing them to successful exits. Dr. Simonetti is a former professor of Operating System Security at the University of Milan, his areas of major expertise are information security and artificial intelligence. Federico’s recognized deep and broad understanding of computer security, encryption and computer forensics have been called upon by both private and public sector organizations assisting in preventing and solving many crimes from business fraud and anti-terrorism.
FKA – DDT
SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: One will read on Extenua.com that, “Extenua technologies provide the most secure solutions for the modern enterprise. Our suite of flexible, collaborative software products enhances your security and compliance capabilities while blending seamlessly into your existing solutions and workflows.” Please give us an overview of Extenua’s CLOUD2DRIVE and SILVERSHIELD solutions.
Steve Visconti: Extenua Inc., a pioneering developer of enterprise security software that simplifies the use and access of ubiquitous cloud storage. Extenua customers include IBM, Fujitsu, Boeing, Nokia, Sony, Toyota, Kaiser Permanente, US Bank and Motorola as well as government institutions, security agencies, other Fortune-500 companies, and thousands of small and medium businesses.
Extenua’s business is based on two technology platforms; SilverSHielD SFTP and Cloud2Drive secure virtual drive for cloud storage.
SilverSHielD SFTP award winning software platform. SilverSHielD software allows users to create an easy-to-use, powerful and reliable SSH2 and SFTP server for the Windows operating system. SilverSHielD users can create a Payment Card Industry (PCI) or Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliant file transfer system, backup Cisco UC platform, or simply and securely transfer files between different locations. It features SSH2 password, interactive and public-key authentication methods, fully supports forwarding tunnels and SFTP subsystem, along with state-of-the-art virtual folders management. The intuitive management console makes it extremely easy to configure and maintain fast, secure file transfers for organizations of all sizes, including those that must meet stringent compliance requirements.
Cloud2Drive SaaS – secure virtual cloud storage drive software with a patent pending cloud clustered file system is purpose built to secure the challenges of leveraging cloud storage resources. Cloud2Drive is a security software that simplifies the way enterprise and SMB utilize cloud storage. Unlike Google Drive, Dropbox, Box.net and others, Cloud2Drive does NOT sell you cloud storage, but enables you to access your cloud storage you choose, even from multiple cloud vendors, public, private or hybrid. Most importantly, Cloud2Drive provides a degree of security and flexibility that no other vendor is able to provide.
There are six key features which vastly differentiate Cloud2Drive from others serving cloud storage. Access controls and encryption key management exceeding HIPAA and PCI compliance standards, Out-of-Band multi-modal second level authentication (through our partnership with ImageWare), Artificial Intelligence-based file caching algorithms enabling secure off-line user cache file access, Aggregated multi-vendor cloud services presented as one or more high-capacity, fault tolerant virtual disk drives for Windows, Android, iOS, Linux, and MAC OSX, Real-time cloud vendor migration services without interruption of cloud service and maintains data availability to the client at all times.
SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: We read with great interest your recent announcement regarding a strategic partnership with Imageware Systems (OTCQB: IWSY) a leader in mobile and cloud-based, multi-modal biometric identity management solutions. Please tell us more about this partnership…what’s the history? Any particular achievements in working with Imageware thus far that you would like to talk about?
Steve Visconti: Applying superior encryption techniques along with multi-modal biometric identity management features provides the most secure, unified enterprise platform without precedent. No matter the cloud service provider and scheme deployed—public, private, and hybrid—the security, flexibility and cost savings of cloud storage more fully leverage enterprise data assets. Partnering with ImageWare allows Extenua to make advanced biometric authentication for cloud storage a reality. Combined, Cloud2Drive with ImageWare GoVerifyID™ revolutionizes secure cloud storage providing unmatched enhanced levels of security the enterprise is looking for. We can now deliver a robust and secure product incorporating ImageWare GoVerifyID™’s out-of-band biometric authentication with advanced fraud-prevention capabilities to organizations. In this current world of security breaches and significantly elevated hacker threats, this platform is purpose built to provide the much needed enterprise-grade security layers required for responsible and proactive governance and data protection.
SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: We understand, Steve, that a number of Fortune 500 companies have already started to leverage the advantages of Extenua’s dynamic product suite: Amazon, BT, IBM, just to name a few. This is quite impressive…care to elaborate?
Steve Visconti: Cloud2Drive and SilverSHielD are designed as Software as a Service. Extenua works with and leverages the existing cloud providers to enable additional SaaS services coupled with their already existing cloud storage offers. Cloud2Drive is a valuable product which enables the service providers to provide additional object based cloud storage transparently to the enterprise infrastructure. With Cloud2Drive, service providers see a significant consumption of cloud storage and other cloud services.
Enterprise customers love Cloud2Drive due to its compelling security architecture unmatched by any other vendor providing cloud services. End customers now have the advantage of control over their security, true mobility, file integrity and service provider backend aggregation for high availability and cloud storage migration.
SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: The threat landscape has never been more challenging and customers are dealing with tight budgets and legacy systems. What is Extenua’s unique value proposition in this environment?
Steve Visconti: Extenua’s unique value proposition is multi-fold. First and foremost is our focus on providing the most hardened secure platform available within the market. The enterprise requires the ability to control their own security encryption keys, maintain access control and know exactly where their data resides. Secondly, affordability is of critical importance to the enterprise customers. By design, Cloud2Drive SaaS enables the enterprise the ability to control their cost and maintain elasticity as they need more or less cloud services. Third is reliability. Extenua provides a software suite which is maintained for the customer as a functional program of the SaaS service. This encompasses not only maintenance support of the software but further provides high availability to protect against potential cloud service outage either planned or unplanned. Finally it is simple to use with no hardware gateways or complicated APIs. It is simply plug-and-play. With these valuable propositions, the enterprise customer can focus resources on their core competency.
SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Steve, can we discuss the Internet of Things for a moment? The benefits IoT are clear…in seconds with our mobile devices we can pay a bill, send a gift, make a dinner reservation, check the stock market, and even manage our health. But, we all know there are bad guys out there always probing for the weakest link into the network and our assets. Are we also more vulnerable Steve in today’s IoT environment? Your thoughts?
Steve Visconti: To ready your company to reap the benefits of Big Data and and IoT the enterprise need to translate the enormous data of networked devices. On premise storage is not well suited for the amount of data being generated. Desktops, BYOD such as tablets, smartphones, sensory data available through embedded technology in nearly every device from your fleet trucks and automobiles to video devices. Future profitability as well as market position will rely on the ability to access and integrate data generated by networked devices into business intelligence. The enterprise can extract significant value through business intelligence and data mining if they use cloud storage as a central repository of data. Extenua’s Cloud2Drive is an extraordinary tool for storing all of your data in the cloud due to Cloud2Drive’s unique architecture for agnostic cloud backend aggregation, real-time access (not sync) and data integrity. Given Big Data and IoT data will be processed in the cloud, why store on premise and move to the cloud later? It makes more sense to start utilizing cloud storage as you use on premise storage today. The value is that this data is immediately accessible to the cloud compute-powered data warehouse.
SecuritySolutionsWatch.com: Thanks again for joining us today, Steve. Are there any other subjects you would like to discuss?
Steve Visconti: In the not too distant future Extenua will announce additional cloud storage software utilities which will provide a significant improvement to server applications requiring cloud storage.