Startups

A College Park software product got acquired by Samsung

Kaprica Security's Tachyon makes sure work phones are configured securely. Samsung is a fan.

The inside of a smartphone is InterDigital's home turf. (Photo courtesy of iFixit)

Kaprica Security, a College Park, Md.-based “computer security research company,” announced on Thursday that a piece of software developed by its team, Tachyon, has been acquired by Samsung.
Tachyon, essentially, is a software solution for mobile device configuration. The technology itself is handset-manufacturer agnostic, but the Tachyon team has been working closely with Samsung devices since launching two years ago. As Doug Britton, CEO of Kaprica, explained to Technical.ly, all Samsung phones and tablets come out of the box exactly the same. But if they’re going to be used for sensitive, work-related things by employees of enterprises dealing in sensitive information (think government or healthcare), the devices need to be configured for security.
Traditionally, Britton said, this configuration has been done by hand (yikes!) by actual humans (eek!) which of course contributes to a high level of error and is expensive. Of course there are other software solutions for configuration (AirWatch is one), but according to Britton these options depend on each app on the phone having an available API. Tachyon does not. Thus, Tachyon is an attractive tool in when the company goes to pitch enterprise customers, Britton said.
And Samsung apparently realizes this as well. About a year ago, Kaprica started the process of spinning off some of its successful technologies into their own companies, Samsung saw value in making Tachyon proprietary. And so the electronics giant acquired the software from Kaprica, bringing the two-person Tachyon team on board as well. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
And now, successful acquisition under its belt, what’s next for Kaprica? Britton said he and his team will get back to it in terms of developing new products. For example, the company is working on vehicle security software called RunSafe, as well as a variety of other projects in the Internet of Things security space.
Britton, for one, is excited about what comes next.

Companies: Samsung

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