Two Canadian startups have signed a second contract to build a secure human resources data management platform for the Canadian Department of National Defense (DND). 

The two startups are Ottawa-based Tehama, which allows enterprises to build secure, cloud-based virtual desktops for a remote workforce, and Toronto-based Bitnobi, which offers a secure data-sharing platform. While the new platform is destined for the DND’s Armed Forces, the goal is to build a product that can apply to any industry. 

“Data is being shared in a very simple manner these days, which is that the owner of data basically provides a copy of data to end-users,” says Hassan Jaferi, CEO of Bitnobi. 

For example, if a hospital wants to share data with a researcher, the hospital would provide an anonymized copy of data to the end-user, Jaferi says. However, these copies are susceptible to getting into the hands of unauthorized parties. In one notable example, Cambridge Analytica managed to collect data on 87 million Facebook users, not only through a Facebook quiz app that harvested quiz-taker data, but also by exploiting a loophole in a Facebook API that could collect data on friends that did not take the quiz. 

“Cambridge Analytica basically got another copy of the data that Facebook didn't know about through a third party,” says Jaferi.

Through Bitnobi, a third party can request information through a query rather than receiving a copy of completely raw data, and Bitnobi does not ingest data shared within the platform itself. 

Meanwhile, Tehama allows employees to work on a virtual desktop as if they’re on the office desktop, but none of the data actually leaves the remote desktop. The two startups combined their expertise to build a data trust solution: while Bitnobi can bring together different data sources that can be contained in a ‘virtual room’, Tehama can provide auditing capabilities that would allow the DND to see who is logging in, where and for how long. 

“They still need to do their job as a manager if they're in Afghanistan or somewhere else on the planet, but [the DND] doesn’t want them to access these systems in a way that any data would physically be in Afghanistan,” says Gene Villeneuve, chief revenue officer of Tehama. 

A burgeoning opportunity supported by procurement

Bitnobi and Tehama began building the platform in May 2019 through the DND’s IDEaS program, which earmarked $1.6 billion in 2018 over the next 20 years to support innovative solutions from conceptualization, with the ultimate goal for procurement. 

They call what they’re building Canada’s only proprietary data trust solution in the Canadian market that manages data tracking, auditing and sharing activities for enterprises, as many solutions can provide secure data-sharing, but don’t offer Tehama’s auditing capabilities. And, half of the intellectual property portfolio of Bitnobi, which spun out of York University research by professor Marin Litoiu, are granted patents, says Jaferi. 

“The combination of Bitnobi with us, and our deep level of compliance, provides that highly secured, audited differentiation in the market,” says Villeneuve. 

As COVID-19 pushes companies to work from home, it is increasingly important to protect data that is being accessed remotely. According to a study from Iomart, a cloud computing company, data breaches in the first quarter of 2020 increased by 273% compared to the same time last year. 

“There's a huge opportunity for organizations to create this sort of data trust, where third parties can access data in a way that's fully audited,” says Villeneuve. 

The program is also an example of how Canadian governments can support burgeoning startups through procurement, by incentivizing startups to build Canadian IP, providing an avenue for testing and measuring success through milestones. 

“If you look at this 30 years ago, this kind of an RFP would have only been won by CGI, IBM, or one of the big guys,” says Jaferi. 

Bitnobi itself has been supported by government and academic programs like the Build in Canada Innovation Program, Toronto Innovation Acceleration Partners (formerly MaRS Innovation) and Innovation York. 

“If it takes a village to raise a child, it very much takes a community to raise a startup,” Jaferi says. 

Tehama and Bitnobi will prove their solution on a milestone basis until September 2021 before moving onto the next phase of the IDEaS program. 

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