Robert Walker
CEO and founder
What opportunity did you recognize that led to the founding of PCPursuit?
Robert Walker: There are a couple of things going on in information security that are really important. Too many information security products only tell you there is a problem after your data has already been stolen. I have seen a few things in my career that are technologies that can prevent problems from happening in the first place, but they are not easy to use and are typically expensive. We recognized that we could make physical systems and digital systems more secure if they could just talk to each other. It’s really never been done before and that’s what we are changing by providing a proactive security solution that is inexpensive and easy to deploy.
What makes your approach different and better from existing approaches?
Walker: Simplicity. You don’t have to roll this out to every asset in your enterprise. You can deploy one tiny piece of software on your Active Directory domain controller and it can protect your entire enterprise. This uses the exact same framework that Microsoft uses themselves. Most solutions don’t do it this way because it’s extremely hard to do.One specific thing our technology doesn’t do is require you to deploy agents to each PC in your enterprise. We have a server that sits between your physical control systems and your Windows Active Directory domain controllers. That PCPursuit software asks if a user badges in and if so, when and where. We report that back and based on what the enterprise administrator wants, we can log it, we can send an email to their manager or restrict access.
What specific value does addressing that opportunity/problem provide for your customers?
Walker: PCPursuit enables enterprises to get considerably better security out of the assets they already own. We make the stuff they have better and we do it very inexpensively. It’s a massive improvement for a very low cost.
Why aren’t current solutions addressing this problem effectively?
Walker: Because they are not thinking outside their own boxes. Physical security solutions only think about the physical side. Digital security only considers their own boxes. We took it up a level to look at both pieces. However, there is another dimension to consider. The technology is really hard to build. The concept is simple, but the execution isn’t easy.
What about your (team’s) background puts you in a unique position to succeed?
Walker: Both my co-founder and I worked at Microsoft. I was there as a full-time employee for 13 years. My co-founder has worked at Microsoft for many years as a consultant. So we both have very deep exposure to Microsoft technology and we know how to implement it in a way that very few people understand. It's not that no one else can do this. It's that few people understand as well as we do how Windows was designed.
What makes this an exciting opportunity for you?
Walker: The thing that I think is most exciting about what we are doing is that we are one of those really rare solutions that can help make your enterprise tremendously more secure than it presently is and at a very low cost. By putting these two pieces of technology together, PCPursuit delivers two key benefits that address two intractable problems:
- It discourages employees from tailgating into buildings. If you can’t get any work done because your login won’t authenticate, you won’t tailgate to get in. If we change the psychology in an office to "always badge in" instead of "avoid it," it changes behavior. Then not badging in becomes the anomaly.
- We also make physical presence another factor for authentication. Passwords aren’t secure. Even if you have to change them every several weeks. People forget them. They write them down so they don’t forget them making them easier to steal. With PCPursuit, if you didn’t badge in, you can’t get access. If your password got phished, that hacker in Russia won’t be physically in your building and can’t get access from inside your enterprise network. If someone found your password, they can’t use it. And we can do it for one-tenth of the cost of other tools in the market. You don’t have to buy tokens or other tools, just install our software on a single server and connect it to Active Directory and your enterprise is immediately more secure.
PCPursuit represents the first example of a simple approach to pairing physical security with digital security. It will have the biggest impact on securing the enterprise since automatic Windows updates. This is the kind of stuff that actually works. Stuff that’s really simple. You just make a little tweak and people don’t have to change the way they work, but it still makes a big difference. It turns out that the technology is hard, but the implementation is simple and effective.
What one aspect of the Mach37 programs did you personally find most beneficial?
Mach37 is really well-connected and is the only accelerator focused solely on information security. Their specialization in information security means everything they do is geared to this field and that is very valuable. In addition, they understand selling to the enterprise. There is a big emphasis in the program on selling and that is not a natural skill for engineers which is the background of most of the founders.