This Spanish start-up wants to be a global benchmark in 2022 in the secure sending of files
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Tranxfer has developed a B2B solution so that a company's employees can send each other files and confidential information through an encrypted channel.
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Miguel Planas, promoter of the platform, is confident that his solution will become a global benchmark in the file storage and forwarding industry in 2 years.
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He acknowledges that during the pandemic, business continuity has been prioritized over computer security, although he warns that he understands it perfectly.
With the pandemic, companies and employees have been forced to work remotely. One of the fringes that remained without a solution is how the workers could be sent sensitive information and files securely. Many firms have embraced services like google drive either drop box for it. There are also alternatives like WeTransfer.
With the sudden arrival of telecommuting, most industries prioritized the business continuity against computer security. This is one of the reasons why the cybersecurity sector is experiencing a before and after in this year 2020.
The same can be said transfer. This Barcelona startup has developed a service for sending and receiving sensitive information with end-to-end encryption. It is already a tool used by important Spanish financial institutions and Ibex 35 companies such as Naturgy.
They have recently announced an injection of one and a half million euros to deepen their international expansion. Miguel Planas is the president of Iris Venture Builder, the holding company of which this new company is a part. He is ambitious. explain to Business Insider Spain who want to offer their customers "the world's most secure solution" for sending files. Other alternatives are not always safe.
To this end, Planas trusts that its tool will end up being among the five most used solutions for sending files in the world. And let it be, of all of them, the safest. He thinks he has wickers for it. The technology already has it. A team of engineers, especially from Telecommunications, too.
Tranxfer's model moves away from the conventional habit of new technology firms. They don't want to burn money. Your staff is mature. Except for fellows, they are about fifteen people over 40 years old. And now they have just hired a Belgian commercial director with whom they intend to expand, especially in central Europe and the United Kingdom.
It is precisely its conservative strategy that is becoming its main attraction to attract and retain large clients of the main Spanish index. Planas emphasizes: at the beginning of the pandemic, many of these large companies even had to resort to email to work with sensitive information.
Many bank offices had to continue working closed and executing operations by email, with the risks that this entails, many of which the head of Digital Client and Spanish hacker Chema Alonso already detailed in a recent talk.
“Email is for sending mail, not for sending sensitive or confidential information. If before there was already an abusive use of email, we can imagine how it is now«, points out this professional who has been working in the field of cybersecurity for almost a decade and a half.
“I think it is correct that business continuity be prioritized”
The pandemic suddenly arrived in Europe and Spain and in a matter of a few days, many companies made the leap to teleworking. Even so, Planas fully understands that most companies choose first to guarantee the continuity of your business and then for its safety.
“And a guy who sells security tells you,” he maintains.
"If you stop the business, what are you going to insure next? Companies such as financial entities are critical infrastructures”, he recalls. He understands that it is essential that they opt for business continuity and immediately afterwards advocate for cybersecurity. "Ideally, it should happen at the same time," he reflects. "But I can't criticize the decisions that were made at the time."
Thus, Planas hopes that Tranxfer will become essential for sending files such as Meet or Teams to hold remote meetings. «A tool to send information can't intervene."
The startup was born after Planas, at the head of Iris Venture Builder, met with a major Spanish bank that was asking for a solution to share files securely. They wanted to combat at all costs the use of Shadow IT - any type of program or device that is used by employees for professional purposes, but that does not have the approval of the company's ICT managers—.
Finally, and after its development, Planas realized that it was a scalable solution and thus Tranxfer was born as a B2B firm that opens the door so that even small professionals —such as an architect who wants to keep or send their plans safely— can make use of this technology.
«There's no need that users download a client. Despite the fact that it is an end-to-end encryption tool, the development of Tranxfer has made it a service that does not require installing anything on the computer. In 2017 it began to be marketed and in 2019 the large clients that the firm has today entered, including Naturgy.
«In January of this year we already had the tool, in our opinion, with the tests to which we subject it, more advanced. And now we put the accelerator ». Plans highlights how a injection of a million and a half —million from the parent company itself, Iris Venture Builder; and 500,000 euros of a bank loan—will help them internationalize, first in Europe.
However, Planas insists on the idea of being, by 2022, a "global reference" firm. "It is local technology with the capacity and leadership to stand up to the big international corporations." The 'David' you want unseat the 'Goliaths' of this industry.
Interview done by Business Insider.
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