“Its boggles my mind that sending a letter in the mail is safer and more private than sending an e-mail or message online. If someone opens my mail, they commit a federal crime, meanwhile, all Silicon Valley tech giants are reading our messages and accessing our files, while selling this gathered information to the highest bidder. That’s the standard practice online and it’s the opposite of what it should be. Furthermore, reputations and careers are being destroyed by weak communication systems. At Zebu we are setting a new standard. We will never gather your information. We even secure you against ourselves. That’s what the online standard should be and that’s the standard we’ve set here,” says Jesse David The, CEO, Zebu.
With the increasing cases of surveillance in recent years, it’s become the norm to collect user information in the consumer and business markets. Millions of businesses information is sold by SaaS providers and smaller businesses who rely purely on email for communication, scheduling and file sharing. This information is unprotected, is easily hacked and susceptible to multiple scams. Addressing this situation, Zebu was established to provide businesses across the globe, from small to large, with better management and communication tools. The company aims to improve the teamwork and collaboration within those organizations and build an entire business management platform similar to an ERP system, where businesses will be able to pick and choose which modules best suit their business needs.
Zebu’s platform currently consists of three modules and has more in store for the near future. The Messaging, Scheduling and File Management modules were built first because they are core to company collaboration and management. The 3-in-1 solution offers productivity gains as each of the modules carry unique features that make them stand out and greatly benefit a company, even if they were standalone products. “Once the product was in a beta stage, we began onboarding companies and received an abundance of positive feedback,” says Jesse.
As the company started to handle data from users, it noticed the industry standard was terrible and was allowing employees to access servers and client information. To resolve this issue, Zebu investigated how other B2B solution providers handle such unfettered access to customer information and realized that most solutions do not offer protection against internal snooping and intentionally read customer data, messages and files to sell information to third parties. Thus, Zebu curated services to maintain the privacy and security of its customers. Moreover, the company has implemented military level security and encryption technology to safeguard their client’s data privacy. As compared to the rest of the solution providers in the market, the Zebu business platform not only offers security against external threats but also against itself.
Zebu developed solutions to improve its client’s communication, team productivity and organization, as well as ensure security and privacy against corporate surveillance. This easy-to-use platform is a great measure against security risks emerging due to unsecure internal communication. Most businesses still use email as their main source of communication internally and store client data and other sensitive documents on unsecure storage in the cloud. The information stored or passed through these tools gets exposed to breaches as they get scanned by the solution provider themselves and lacks encryption and protection.
Whereas, Zebu’s communication tool offers secure AES 256-bit no knowledge encryption for every message and file sent. It encrypts each message and file with a unique key and enables the users to have group discussions, direct conversations, vote in polls, have outbound communication with other organizations and more. The scheduling system allows users to easily spot and set up meetings at available times that work for everyone. It maintains secure and private events through their access controls and the events themselves are encrypted. The file storage module allows users to create shared and personal work folders to store and pass files among their teams, allowing for effortless collaboration.
Zebu believes in ‘security-first’ and builds everything around its main goal. By employing tested encryption standards like ECDH and AES-256, the company delivers a truly no-knowledge encryption service to its customers. No-knowledge encryption ensures that Zebu never handles any of the user’s encryption keys, and only the user has those keys to decrypt files and messages. This not only keeps the customer’s data secure from attacks during transit but also protects it against leaks while on Zebu servers. Moreover, the company keeps its infrastructure secure by running routine security scans and conducting third-party security audits. “Security is ingrained into the workflow as well, with protections such as approval-based password resets, encryption backed access controls, and we are currently developing machine learning algorithms to detect and report suspicious logins,” adds Jesse. Upon sign up with Zebu, the company provides a Backup-kit that carries a unique set of keys that will allow the user to reset passwords or other account information.
The exchange of information can be through files, text messages, and code segments. Zebu respects all these forms. A big advantage is the ability to transfer of large files, on the order of gigabytes. Zebu also preserves software code formats, allowing developers to share pieces of code between them without losing format.
To help Zebu fit into multiple industries, the company has implemented several features that allow its clients to customize their user experience. With its Code Snippets, Polling and high-end security measures, the company is now able to address every unique problem of each industry. Companies that deal with sensitive client information, gained a huge benefit from Zebu’s solution as they can now better manage client information, communicate more effectively and better manage meetings. The polling feature allows marketing agencies to collaborate efficiently on artwork and design ideas. Zebu also offers its clients the ability to integrate with other tools that businesses use so that they can make use of Zebu’s built-in webhook system to plug their other tools into Zebu to keep all their work in one place.
Several companies suffer from ongoing attacks on the web to extract client information and any successful attack can take them out of business with million-dollar lawsuits. Some companies even go so far as to get expensive insurance to protect themselves in such an event. To avoid such a situation, a bookkeeping company started using Zebu because the solution allowed them to stop storing sensitive client information on unsafe platforms.
Zebu plans to build a complete ERP system and beyond. The company is currently focusing on enriching its platform and is improving the client experience through their feedback. Zebu will also release a project management and timesheet module which will allow users to enrich their current experience and combine the benefits of using each module together. Zebu has clients in Canada, the United States, Brazil, Qatar and Kuwait and offers their solution across the globe.
Facts:
Too many people are losing their jobs due to cyber attacks.
Existing infrastructure is very fragile and requires solutions like Zebu.
It would require more energy than all the energy produced by a supernova to break our encryption.
Every 12 seconds a business loses a document due to lack of proper file management.
$1.2 billion is the cost of email information security breaches in less than one full year only in the United States.
$500,000 is the estimated yearly cost due to poor communication.
