(Image via GlobeX Data Ltd.)
Many around the world are still recovering after a massive cyber-attack on Microsoft Corp.’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) widely used business email software that evolved into a full global cybersecurity crisis.
The hacking group has so far claimed at least 60,000 known victims around the world, many appear to be small or medium-
sized businesses caught in a wide net the attackers cast as Microsoft worked to shut down the hack.
This attack was expected by many experts who specialize in the field, such as
GlobeX Data Ltd. (CSE: SWIS, OTCQB: SWISF, Forum).
According to a February 2021 report from
ResearchandMarkets.com, the global managed cybersecurity market was valued at an estimated $22.5 billion (USD) last year amid the COVID-19 crisis and is projected to grow to $60.9 Billion by 2027, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.3%. The report also highlighted Identity & Access Management, which is a segment forecast to record a 17.6% CAGR and reach $26.6 billion.
As more companies take their business into the cloud, this threat is expected to become even more serious.
This Toronto-based cybersecurity and internet privacy provider of Swiss hosted solutions for secure data management and secure communications distributes a suite of secure cloud-based storage, disaster recovery, document management, encrypted e-mails, and secure communication tools. Serving global consumers, businesses, and governments, the Company sells its products through its approved wholesalers and distributors, and telecommunications companies worldwide.
It has been a busy few month for SWIS, who has been responding to the mass panic shared among businesses worldwide who use MS Exchange as their business email solution with its
Sekur secure encrypted email, encrypted messaging and secure file-share communications solution.
The Company signed its first distribution agreement for Sekur with telecom giant América Móvil in
Mexico and Latin America, covering Mexico and other countries where América Móvil has operations. More recently, the Company
entered the final stages of signing a distribution deal in South Asia with a large telecommunications operator for Sekur.
This builds upon the Company’s business strategy which was supported in January 2021 by closing a
private placement for total gross proceeds of CA$1,080,000 and net proceeds of CA$999,500, it then followed this up by signing
a major distribution agreement in Kuwait and expanding its deals in Arab gulf countries, then a week later it signed another distribution agreement, this time with
SYNNEX Canada, a subsidiary of Fortune 200 firm
SYNNEX Corporation (NYSE: SNX), covering 6,000 resellers nationwide, and in February
announced it is in advanced discussions with the largest South Asian telecom operator to launch its Swiss hosted
Sekur application. The Company then closed another
private placement in March 2021 for total gross proceeds of CA$1,222,920 and net proceeds of CA$1,162,920.
Stockhouse Editorial caught up with GlobeX Data Ltd.’s Chief Executive Officer Alain Ghiai to dig a little deeper into this business ....
Thank you for joining us today. Due to the catastrophic breaches on Microsoft Exchange Servers and Microsoft Business Email services, what level of increase in business inquiries has GlobeX has been receiving?
We have seen a dramatic increase in the Business clients that we were talking with. Notably the large enterprises that were using the Microsoft Exchange servers on-premise. This means in their offices or data centers. Some of these are governments and banks and we can finally say that having a non-Big Tech solution is starting to have its positive effects. We expect the demand to grow over the years, as businesses are tired of having their data stolen by cyber thieves and sold by the Big Tech players, including Microsoft.
What indication does an attack of this magnitude signal to you about the future of cyber threats, their size, diversity, and dangerous capability?
This tells us that cybercrime is not only here to stay, but is becoming a global pandemic of some sort. This is a digital pandemic, affecting hundreds of millions of people, such as the latest Facebook hack, and tens of millions of businesses. The cybercrime is costing the global economy over 6 trillion US dollars a year. We need to defend ourselves, take precautions and be vigilant, just as much as we are doing for a pandemic like COVID-19 at this time. We definitely recommend using secure solutions such as Sekur.com for your email and messaging communications.
You recently released a research report by the Tormont Group. Can you explain a little what this means for the Company and exposure to institutional investors?
The Tormont Group is an amazing company with over 20 years of experience in corporate public company premium advisory services. They have very knowledgeable people on board, and their head research analyst is an ex-Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns analyst. Tormont is sending this report to their 73 long-only funds, family offices and institutional investors in the USA and Canada. This is going to bring awareness to professionals who are looking at investments in our market cap range. We expect this to be the first of many efforts we will do in order to bring awareness of our company to institutional investors in the coming years. The report can be seen here:
GlobeX Data Tormont Research Report.
On one of your interviews and press release, you mention a launch in the USA in Q2. Can you elaborate on your plans?
We have a very specific strategy for the US market. We plan to start in mid-May to launch
Sekur through several partnerships with media companies, through sponsorship of podcasts, email marketing and native digital ads. We will elaborate more via press releases and interviews as the launches start. There will be at least three launches between mid-May and the end of June. We also plan, in parallel, to launch several email marketing campaigns targeting close to 700,000 C-level executives and several thousand small and medium businesses, and finally, we are planning a large SEO campaign starting June. The SEO campaign will increase organic traffic to our Sekur.com website, and in turn generate revenues. Lastly, we plan to partner with a handful of large distributors in the USA, in order to complete our B2B strategy, as we have done in Canada with
SYNNEX Canada (NYSE: SNX).
The Company has signed several major distribution agreements, especially considering SYNNEX’s reach, even if a small percentage of its resellers resell Sekur, what is the expectation for what this will bring to the Company?
SYNNEX Canada has 6,000 resellers in Canada alone and we are hoping to have at least 50 good resellers selling our solutions on a regular basis. Businesses in Canada are a little slower to adopt cyber-security and privacy solutions, however, we have seen a steady increase. Should we get 50 resellers on a regular basis, we expect at least 5,000 new licenses sold every year. We are also applying for SYNNEX in the USA and should we get the approval of SYNNEX USA, we anticipate a far greater number of resellers and licenses to be sold annually from the US market. Recently, SYNNEX Corporation (NYSE: SNX) has agreed to merge with Tech Data, another large global distributor with over 100,000 resellers worldwide, so we expect a positive outcome for us once the combined entity has fully merged. We have a dedicated person for all of our North America partnerships and we are working alongside SYNNEX Canada now to increase awareness. This is early day, and once it picks up, it could generate a sizable amount of revenue for the company.
A multi-currency platform for the Sekur.com secure communications solution is set to launch in anticipation of its global mass market launch in June 2021, are there any more details about the platform you can share?
The global platform is set to be ready by either end of June 2021. This will allow us to sell the
Sekur solutions separately, such as Sekur, SekurMessenger and SekurPro, and to be sold globally in local currencies and languages. For example, a user from Canada will see CAD pricing, a user from Australia AUD pricing and a user from Switzerland CHF pricing and so forth. We plan to be launched in Q3 2021 in Canada, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, the EU, the UK, Asia and particularly Singapore, and the Middle East, specifically the Gulf countries. We also plan to sell per-seat licenses so no one is stuck with a particular set plan and a business can buy the exact number of licenses they need and upgrade or downgrade as need be.
GlobeX prides itself on not being connected to “Big Tech” platforms, can you speak to the benefit of offering a truly independent, private and secure means of communications?
GlobeX has always been ahead of its time in its strategy and technology development. We never have, or will use Open-Source coding and never have, or will use third party platforms to host our data and code. 98% of all software are built on Open-Source coding and this is why they are constantly being hacked. We have always been wary of the Big Tech such as AWS, Microsoft and Google, as none of them are interested in protecting your privacy. Another advantage is that we do not need to comply with the CLOUD Act, which dictates that no matter which country your data resides in, if you are using a US platform, you are subject to data being looked at the US authorities and lawyers. With GlobeX, as the data resides only in Switzerland, and as our platform is independent and proprietary, a user gets the double advantage of privacy and security.
Can you speak to the shift in trend away from mega cloud providers into more privacy and security focused solutions providers, such as yourselves?
Yes. Recently, mega cloud providers have been the target of bigger attacks and this has created some big issues in terms of security. The other problem is that big cloud providers are data mining your data. Their interest is to sell or lease that data mining treasure to other big techs. Microsoft selling data mining of its users to Facebook for example. There are plenty of examples in the press as more and more are being caught. With more selective and exclusive cloud providers, such as GlobeX you have a better understanding of where the data resides. In our case, we never data mine the users, and all the data resides in Switzerland in our proprietary platform. We guarantee the privacy of users’ data.
What can you tell us about the latest Sekur feature and the upcoming SekurPro?
We have an amazing feature we just soft launched. It is a way to send an instant message to a non-SekurMessenger user, without the recipient having to download our app or even register for it. This is very useful for businesses, such as realtors, financial advisors, lawyers and corporate executives. This means that you can avoid sending messages on WhatsApp because WhatsApp is so ubiquitous. From now on, any Sekur user can message any non Sekur user. The recipient simply receives an email invite, clicks to chat, and when the chat is over, the sender can terminate it and the conversation disappears from the recipient's phone. We should note that we never require your phone number to sign up to
Sekur either. SekurPro is our upcoming video conferencing application which includes all the features of Sekur plus voice, video and screen sharing, similar to a Zoom or Teams from Microsoft. The advantage is that with SekurPro everyone can enjoy the same privacy and security Globex offers to the regular Sekur solution. We plan to launch SekurPro in Q3 2021 and it will be targeted at C level executives, HNWIs and governments as the cost will be in the range of US$500to US$750/year per user.
What can you tell us about GlobeX’s proprietary HeliX and VirtualVaults technologies?
All our technology and products are created with security and privacy-by-design. We developed our proprietary VirtualVaults and HeliX technologies, which require a lot of processing power. VirtualVaults encrypts each user’s data separately and segregates each user from another using multiple encrypted “Vaults”, protecting each user with multiple security layers. HeliX is our way to secure in multiple ways the transfer of data from your device to our servers. Contrary to most services, we do not encrypt at device level, we do all encryptions at server levels in the data center. Essentially, we built a solid pipeline for you to beam back and forth your data to view it and work with it while you are always working out of the servers in Switzerland, since we do not store any meta data on your device. Our proprietary VirtualVaults and HeliX technologies are too costly for other large providers and it will also hide your data so it is useless for most companies that make a living by mining your data and reselling it.
Looking ahead, any newsworthy items coming in the near future that investors should keep an eye out for?
Definitely our launch in Latin America coming up later this month most likely, with América Móvil launch and other launches in the region with our distributor Micronet, our launches in the US markets starting in mid-May and the signing of the contract with the largest South Asian telecom operator before the end of this quarter. We are planning to deploy our solutions globally and executing a very precise plan in the next few quarters so it is good to stay tuned and follow our progress. We expect profitability within 18 months or less and we have plenty of cash to attain our goal.
For more information about this Company, visit
globexdatagroup.com.
FULL DISCLOSURE: This is a paid article produced by Stockhouse Publishing.