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As data forgery and theft continues to plague businesses and individuals alike, real word, real time solutions are needed to battle the bad actors infiltrating private corporate and personal data.
Enter
SoLVBL Solutions Inc. (
CSE.SOLV,
OTCMKTS: SOLBF,
Forum) – a cybersecurity engineering company specializing in applications that address critical data integrity problems. In short, a proprietary, patent-pending data authentication solution that “creates trust…fast.”
Stockhouse Media’s Dave Jackson caught up with company CEO Ray Pomroy to get investors up-to-date with all things SoLVBL Solutions.
TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
SH: To start off with, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and the history of the company?
RP:Sure. Well my background is supply chain. That's really where I spent most of my career and I worked in Europe, in Canada, in the US. For my sort of final, big corporate job, I looked after all the Personal Care Supply Chain for North America for a rather large company, I think it's the second largest consumer goods company in the world. And that was a great job. I managed a billion dollars of costs, seven factories, 2000 people, a lot of change, a lot going on. So really, I look after the total supply chain. When I came into this company , it was called Agile Blockchain. I came in as a Director due to my Supply Chain background and the company was focused on supply chain solutions using a blockchain.The CEO left end of 2019. And I offered to come in on a temporary basis hold the fort whilst we got a permanent CEO.
And that's what I did. I came in, you know, first thing was to ask everyone what they were doing, what we were working on, what was going on. And I was pretty underwhelmed actually. I thought most of it was pretty generic. I didn't think that we could charge high margins for anything we were doing. All the problems with blockchains being slow were all beginning to manifest themselves as we were trying to find some products. Our clever Developershad realized the problems with blockchains and had tried to find a solution to the speed and latency issues. As I was going through with them what, what we were working on this issue came up. They proposed a way of tackling it, I was so taken with it because it was different, it was new, it was novel that I actually shut down all the other work and we pivoted. We decided to forget the supply chain and focus on this idea. It’s why SoLVBL as we are now called came into being. We decided to run with this idea and turn it into something, turn it into code, turn it into a product, get it working. And I have to say at the time it was just a concept. I mean, it wasn't anything more than a concept and the guys have done a fantastic job to turn that concept actually into a potential product. As a consequence, we decided that agile blockchain was a name that just confused people. So we changed our name to SoLVBL solutions. Not that long ago, actually. I think it was probably around the turn of the year that we dropped the Agile Blockchain and became SoLVBL solutions.Andchanged our focus, as I say, away from supply chain into the cyber security area. Although we didn't really think of it as cyber security at the time. The way we looked at it was in the real world, the world that you and I live in, if you want to forge a Check there are ways that I can check the Check is authentic. I can check your handwriting. I can check the ink that you've used. I can see when the paper's scuffed under a microscope, there's lots of physical things I can do to see whether you've actually committed forgery. In the digital world. It's just ones and zeros. That's all. And as you know, one set of ones and zeros are very much like another set of ones and zeros. And how would you know where the ones and zeros had been changed? In our view, you wouldn’t. Enter SoLVBL.
So what we have done is developed a product , such that when you create data, you essentially interact with us. And we mutually seal up the data and we provide the equivalent of the thumbprint, and that thumbprint travels forever with that data. If anyone comes in and in a malicious way, a bad actor comes in and decides to substitute the data or modify the data, whatever, then the thumbprint on the changed data don't match up. When you use the data, you can have it authenticated automatically. And if someone's come in and changed the data you can detect it. So our view is you can't stop digital fraud. It's too difficult to stop it. But what you can do and what we offer is authentication. Detection, if it’s changed . We're different. Although we say we're a cybersecurity company, we're different from a lot of other cyber security businesses.Normally the strategy, if you go back to the old castle days, you build a castle, you put a moat around it, you have a drawbridge, which can be raised, you make the walls very high and you stop people from coming in. However, if someone manages to get in, once they're inside the castle walls, they’re free roam around, they're free to do whatever they like. That's a space that we want to play in , we're not a typical cybersecurity company. We're not offering, you know firewalls and defenses that are on the boundaries. We’re essentially saying, look, you just will not be able to stop everyone from coming in. So it makes far more sense to protect your data inside the organization. Other Companies can, can help you provide the walls to try and keep the hackers out.
But if a hacker gets through, then our system allows you before you use data, to authenticate it and to feel confident that it hasn't been manipulated. And when you think about the way the world's moving now, data is just exploding. Data’s been used for all sorts of things, Algorithms, it’s being used for AI. And you knowif you're going to use the automated systems to produce results, and to run your business then you've got to know that the input is valid. When I went to school, they taught us, garbage in, equals garbage out. And so what we can do is we can tell you whether garbage is coming in or not. Then you don't have to use the “garbage” data and you're protected.
So that, in a nutshell, is how we've ended up where we are today. We started off with a Blockchain focus. We didn't like the speed and latency issues around Blockchains. I'm not knocking Block chains, by the way, they have their place, but they can't operate at speed and they have high latency associated with them And we looked to solve those issues ,originally for supply chain solutions. But soon as I realized that we potentially had a wider solution, it made far more sense to pivot into the world that we're now focused on.
SH: For our investor audience that might not be that familiar with cybersecurity solutions and the technology behind it, can you tell us basically how your technology works and what makes SoLVBL so different and innovative?
RP:Well, I can't tell you exactly how it works because it's a trade secret. I think I can give you a rough idea. So we use a combination of cryptography and blockchain. Although this is not a hundred percent accurate analogy, I think this is a good way to think about what we do. If you go to your lawyer and you want to set a up a will. Normally the lawyer signs it, you sign it and a witness witnesses the signatures so that the lawyer can't say the document didn't exist and he didn't sign it. You can't say the same thing. And an independent witness has actually watched the two signatures. Sowhat we do with cryptography and a blockchain is something akin to that. You send me data here, you are signing it. We receive the data, we're signing it. And that's all done with cryptography.
And then with a clever use of the blockchain, the blockchain sort of becomes a witness to the event. So we can't say this, this didn't happen. And it doesn't exist. By the way I should add, I didn't say it in the first part, butwe were totally data agnostic. We never see the data. The data never leaves your control, if you're someone who wants to protect your data, your data stays your data. We have no idea what it is. It could be spreadsheets. It could be a housing predictions. I mean, who knows? We don't care. Actually, all we do is we take a representation of the data. And then we, we work to magically use cryptography, and a blockchain. We give you this little thumbprint, which allows you at any stage to authenticate the data. Actually anybody else using the data can authenticate the data as well. You can confirm the data is as it was when it was first created, plus the data never leaves your possession.
SH: You also announced in March that the company had increased its cryptography capabilities. Can you unpack the benefits of this?
RP: Sure. Cryptography is a very specialist area. It's a highly mathematical area. And we had arrived at the solution with non-cryptographic people being very clever and being very imaginative and very innovative. And we worked out a way of solving a problem. What we needed was validation from a cryptographer. Someone independent to come in and have a look at what we've done and say, yeah, that works. We struggled to find cryptographic help. First of all, there aren't many cryptographers. Secondly, they're all very busy because every major institution, every major bank scoops these people up and uses them. So it was very difficult for us to get somebody. And then it was very difficult for us to find someone who would be interested in working with a small startup company and helping them. However, we did find someone and we're very pleased and it's working out to be a very good collaboration.
She's bringing a lot to the party. She's bringing a way of thinking and analysis that is different to the way we work. And of course we're bringing a different way of thinking , as well for her. So it's a good mutual combination and I see lots and lots of potentially innovative products coming down the line. And so once this first phase is over, there'slots of ideas for products that we have where she can be very helpful to us. So maybe she can get involved from the word go. I think it's just very exciting and I'm very pleased we actually found somebody. It took me almost nine months to find a cryptographer.
SH: For company shareholders and potential investors, what kind of future development and projects can we expect from SoLVBL moving through 2021 and beyond?
RP:Well, the first thing, obviously, we've got to do is to get to Q by SoLVBL into the marketplace, we've got to get it in use, we've got to generate revenue and make some sales. The big priority for me is to get into a trial situation that leads to sales. And we're targeting three areas where we think we can offer something that's valuable and that people will be prepared to pay for it. One obviously is the financial world, where there’s a lot of data moving around or a high value data moving around and it's important that, fraud isn't actually occurring in this movement. So that's one area that we feel that we really want to target. And we have plans in place for that. The two other areas thatwe envisioned for the use of our technology, one of them is it's called NG 911, or you may not have heard very much about this, but the NG stands for Next Generation.
911 is the emergency service. And what's happening is the world is changing and everyone's got as everyone's got a smartphone. For example, if there's an accident on the side of the road, people are taking videos, they're taking photographs and they're sending these things into 911. They're sending texts and they're tweeting, it's not only landline phone calls any longer. It's a whole range of digital interactions. And of course, some of the stuff that comes in may be needed for evidence., There may be court cases that arise and maybe lawsuits that come out of it. We believe, we have an opportunity to use our system to seal up data as it's actually coming in and authenticated it. So that at some later stage you can authenticate it as the original feed that came in. You can show someone hasn't photo-shopped it. You can also see someone hasn't sent something in that they Photoshopped. We can say, no, this is the real video. as we received it. It's been sealed up and no one's altered it. So what you're now producing as evidence obviously has been photo-shopped because it doesn’t match the original.
So we see that as, NG 911, rolls out, mainly in America, to start with and later in Canada. There’s a huge opportunity for us to get in there and offer our services. And of course this will ultimately be a worldwide phenomenon. Once it's finished in North America, you know, it's going to happen in Europe, it's going to happen in South Africa, Australia, Latin America. So that's a nice global opportunity there for us. And out of thinking about that, we then came to the third area that we believe that we have something to offer, and that is the Digital Chain of Evidence.
So this is the world where the police operate in. Increasingly the evidence that police are collecting is digital and that they have very complicated procedures. We have looked at what they do, and we believe that we can offer some productivity savings and cost savings and some speed savings to them. So that's the other area that we'll be focusing on. Over the next period of time, you should be looking for news in those areas coming from us. That's what we're focusing on. We have to focus. We have limited resources. Although I can think of lots and lots of uses for this product we need to focus. The mantra t we use inside the businesses is “if the data worth forging, it’s worth protecting”. We're not in the game of just protecting data for the sake of protecting it.
There has to be some value to someone to get in there and forge the data. Either they can pocket some money, they can influence a trial, they can change, they can change outcomes, whatever. That's where we want to play. That's where we want to go. And that, I think over the next 18 months, you should look for news items that come out that shows that we've got trials going on in those areas. And then hopefully those trials will lead to business and to orders.Not an issue of course, it's educating people to understand that there's actually a problem here. I can say there's a problem. I'm not the person who will be buying the software. So we have to convince the potential customers that there's a vulnerability. And not only is there a vulnerability, but you wouldn't even know if someone was doing it to you. So it's not like you can have a problem and go, oh, I've got a problem. I need to solve it. This could be going on today and you wouldn't know. It's a bit more of a harder sell for us, but once we're in and we can demonstrate the product, the speed, the latency, and the ability of the software, I think we'll be fine.
SH: I have to mention your stock has been on a bit of a roller coaster ride since you went public back in late February. What can you tell our investor audience regarding the current valuation of your stock and why you think it’s a good buy right now?
RP:So I have to be a bit careful in answering this particular question because it's a little bit outside of my expertise level. What I will say is that we have something that's unique. We have something that works. There's a real problem out there that needs a solution, even if people don't necessarily know or have realized yet there's a problem. So I think we've all the ingredients to be very successful, but it's not going to be an overnight. It's not like we're putting an app out and, you know, we're going to be the next Tik Tok or something. I mean, we're talking about selling business to business, and we're talking about pretty high value deals. So, you know, the sales cycle is going to be a little bit long, I don't think you should expect news coming out every week.
If you want to invest in the stock, I think you have to believe there's actually a problem that we have a solution to the problem, and that we are capable going out there and convincing people to buy our product and if we're right in our view , the stock looks like a bargain at the present moment. But all that stuff has to happen and it's not going to happen in a week and it’s not going to happen in two weeks. It's not going to happen in a month. It takes time to get it, to get to the right people and then persuade them. There's an issue that needs addressing, , to do a trial, to see the results, and then to part with their hard-earned money. It's just a long sales cycle.
SH: Can you tell our audience a little bit about your corporate management and board teams, along with the experience and innovative ideas they bring to the cybersecurity space?
RP:Yeah. As well as I said at the start,we've sort of backed into the cyber security space. So, when the company was started, that really wasn't the target market, but we're lucky we have on our board, we have someone with great financial experience. We have someone with great academic connections and experience and in the digital world, we our chairman is someone who actually has started up digital businesses made them successful, had them bought out and come back in and started again. So there's an entrepreneurial mindset there. And we have someone who is very good on the HR side. So we've got a nice, rounded board as for the management team. There's two of us, there's me. And I told you, my background. And I work with a CFO who has lots of experience in small entrepreneurial companies, companies that have gone public. So he brings a lot of financial wisdom to the party and realism for that matter. And I have to say that, although they're not defined as a management team, the developers that we've got are fantastic. They're very, open-minded, they're very interested in learning new stuff and applying new stuff. And I, I'm pretty impressed actually with the team, everyone that we've got actually. So I think it bodes well for the future.
SH: And finally, Ray, if there’s anything I’ve overlooked please feel free to elaborate.
RP:No, I think you've been pretty comprehensive there, Dave, actually, I think we've covered,most of the ground. I think you knowas in everything else, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. So when someone actually buys our system and it's in use, you'll know that what I'm saying is for real. I know it's for real, and I'm pretty excited ,if it wasn't real and exciting, I'm not sure I'd be doing this present at the present moment. You know, I think this is, it's an unusual situation that you find you've developed something, which is new, and unique, and that there's a real need for it. So watch the space. I think that's what we'll be saying.
For more information, visit
solvbl.com
FULL DISCLOSURE: This is a paid article produced by Stockhouse Publishing.