A Recipe for Global Success: SyncDog rebrands its SentinelSecure™ Defense-grade Mobile Workspace to Secure.Systems™

“SyncDog is uniquely positioned in the market to offer the most flexible solutions that deliver the most comprehensive security.” – Jonas Gyllensvaan, CEO & Founder SyncDog, Inc.

Smartphones and tablets are everywhere. People are spending more and more money on the latest and fastest mobile devices, upgrading them almost constantly, and integrating them into every part of their lives. A large part of that integration is work-related. Employees use their own devices to manage work calendars, view and respond to e-mail, take notes at meetings, and almost anything else they would ordinarily do at their in-office workstation. Allowing employees to bring their own devices to work is no longer a trend; it has become a business necessity.

More than 50 percent of all corporate network activity is coming from mobile devices, and that number likely will only increase. But when your company’s data isn’t under your control, it can be risky business.

In light of the above-mentioned concern, we are thrilled to present SyncDog, Inc., the leading independent software vendor (ISV) for building mobile frameworks that extend app functionality to devices while securing corporate and Government networks from mobile-endpoint threat. The firm provides mobile application containerization solutions with peak functionality and security to start-ups, enterprises, and Fortune 2000 companies.

The company was founded in 2013 and is based in Reston, Virginia.

Interview Excerpt: Jonas Gyllensvaan, CEO & Founder

Why was the company set up? How did you select the vertical and decide to be a part of the global marketplace?

When I started SyncDog in 2013, I had already been working in mobile technology for years and noticed growing gaps in the marketplace for mobile security. The large international full-service IT vendors had very little competition and this created a monopolistic mobile security market with bullish business practices – rigid and expensive pricing structures, numerous acquisitions leading to poor or discontinued customer support, endless integration cycles, and mass-produced solutions with little focus on customer requirements that made sense. Ultimately, customers were tossed around with little alternative. I knew I could leverage my mobile technology subject matter expertise to challenge enterprise IT vendors with flexible, customer-centric solutions and service.

Tell us about your first product that was launched.

SyncDog’s flagship enterprise mobility security product was SentinelSecure™, recently rebranded to Secure.Systems™.

Secure.Systems™ is a secure mobile app workspace with FIPS 140-2 certified, AES 256-bit encryption that secures data between the enterprise and secure, sandboxed applications running on employees’ mobile devices. The mobile workspace delivers a highly functional and easy app experience for users and protects enterprise data with a secure, partitioned FIPS 140-2 certified container across both iOS and Android devices. Applications in the workspace include Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise, Skype for Business, SharePoint, OneNote, DropBox, enterprise chat, geo-location services and a host of other productivity applications for mobile.

The workspace is so lightweight and flexible that a SaaS deployment option for our customers was natural, yet its robust security features still provide Microsoft Intune and others a secure app workspace they can use to deploy their enterprise productivity apps.

In addition to its recent SaaS deployment offering, Secure.Systems™ can also be delivered via Hybrid Cloud or On-Premise, and has a multi-tiered licensing model to suit a variety of organizational models and budgets. Currently, existing SyncDog customers with SentinelSecure™ can seamlessly update to Secure.Systems™ without any special considerations.

What kind of mixed responses have you received from your consumers over the years? How have they motivated you to shape your offerings/grow the company?

When we started, mobile containerization to secure enterprise mobility was our main focus – organizations weren’t protecting enterprise data on their employees’ BYOD and COPE (Corporate-owned Personally-enabled) devices sufficiently, and the risk to enterprise networks was highly evident.

Then we saw a lot of App Development Platforms entering the marketplace. The app development functionality is superb but the roll-out processes needed a security platform that saved time and had at least FIPS 140 encryption. As demand for these custom application development platforms grew Secure.Systems™ became a key player in the roll-out cycle across clients’ enterprises.

What are the pain points of the industry addressed by the company?

As BYOD and CYOD (choose your own device) force organizations into better mobile security and collaboration strategies, attention must now be focused on securing the data on devices itself versus the physical management of devices. Mobility and applications as a whole have together become another endpoint for government and industry to manage as the market looks beyond MDM to determine what tool can be used to protect key data from all mobile threats – whether internal or external.

Aside from the volatility and unpredictability in the market due to ever-changing solutions, we are noticing a ‘see-saw’ problem in enterprise mobile security where government or industry either have an EMM investment that is too secure to be functional, or too open to be secure. Many mobile containers out there connect via VPNs which are known to be slow and unstable. VPNs are also known for high resource utilization and high total cost of ownership. Enterprises often find themselves with a device-level security tool that lacks the productivity they experience from working within the firewall.

Incorporating a containerized approach to mobile security shouldn’t eliminate the productivity advantage that mobile technology made possible in the first place, and that’s one of many reasons we created Secure.Systems™.

What are the differentiating factors that set your company apart from its competitors?

Organizations need a mobile security solution that offers the best possible device-level security and SOC monitoring capabilities without sacrificing end-user productivity. We listen to our customers, and while we can never predict with 100-percent accuracy what the next big thing will be, our open, exploratory approach with existing and potential customers yields clearly defined development plans for our solutions. We are a small company with the ability to move quickly. We can make adjustments that satisfy customer requests more nimbly than full-service IT vendors. But most importantly, we make adjustments that make sense to customers and to the marketplace.

We recently partnered with German-based EBF GmbH, securing distribution permissions for iO Intune Onboarder and EBF EMM Migrator in the Americas. These products are changing the game for organizations who would like to switch EMM solutions but feel stuck due to the cost of traditional migrations. Now with EBF they can easily migrate in just a few steps, and we believe this is going to add competition and incentive for innovation in the market.

Lastly, when we identify a customer’s need, we act from the standpoint of ‘security first,’ and all development decisions are made with this in mind; then flexibility – we adjust to the customer and deliver on key requirements quickly; then independence – we do not rely on an MDM or any other technical framework, so we can be easily deployed with no infrastructure dependencies; and finally, scalable integration – once deployed, the framework allows for unlimited investment by companies mobilizing their business workflows.

Where do you see your company a couple of years from now?

We anticipate more customers over the next two years through both organic and partner channels. We have been steadily adding leadership resources and development infrastructure to serve our customers in the most attentive ways possible. Our development team is also continually improving the end-user experience for the most productivity and ease of use within the Secure.Systems™ container, as well as working hard to increase application offerings. Our work with a couple of mobile app development partners is giving each organization a secure environment to develop productivity applications that speak to their individual requirements.

For more company information, visit SyncDog.com.

For product information, visit https://secure.systems.

The Brain behind the Operation

Jonas Gyllensvaan, CEO& Founder: Jonas Gyllensvaan is a serial entrepreneur with more than 20 years of experience in mobile IT solution development and software business development. He has founded three successful start-ups and is a current board adviser to several others. Over the past 20 years, Jonas has designed, developed, and implemented technology projects for government agencies and commercial enterprises in more than a dozen countries. He spends a good portion of his time visiting customers and traveling to leading industry conferences learning about the client and marketplace needs, using this knowledge to build solutions with a focus on technology architecture, product design, and business management. Across his 20-year career in mobile IT, Jonas has a proven track record of leading-edge product development, building profitable companies while forging beneficial business partnerships for clients.