South African software company in top 10 internationally

Based in Stellenbosch, this young company specialises in cutting edge software development for the mobile phone environment. Says Christiaan Brand, chief technical officer of Entersect, "It proves that South Africa can compete with the best out there and also validates the work that we do. Our interactive electronic security platform on a mobile phone uses an entirely different approach and offers completely different technology. We're fortunate to be working in South Africa, as new security threats, especially with regards to banking, are a daily occurrence and these force us to be innovative in a rapidly changing environment."

The panel of international judges includes Asheem Chandna of Greylock Partners, Gerhard Eschelbeck of Webroot, Renee Guttmann of Time Warner Inc, Paul Kocher of Cryptography Research, Ray Rothrock of Venrock and Hugh Thompson, programme committee chair for RSA Conference 2011. The winner will be announced on Tuesday morning, February 15, during the opening session of the conference.

Finalists:

• CipherCloud - CipherCloud Cloud Gateway - provides anonymity to data and captures user activities in the cloud. It uses functionality-preserving encryption and tokenization techniques in real-time prior to sending data to the cloud while retaining all cloud app features such as search, report and data-integration.
  
• Entersect - Interactive Transaction Authentication (ITA) - this module provides additional-factor, out of band, interactive authentication for any form of digital action taking place.
  
• Gazzang Inc - ezNcrypt - goes beyond unlimited encryption of MySQL databases, tables and files for large organizations with hundreds of database servers and those whose business foundation depends on the security of data, such as large healthcare and financial institutions.
  
• HyTrust - HyTrust Appliance 2.1 - is a network-based policy management solution for virtual infrastructure that provides administrative access control, hypervisor hardening, and audit-quality logging.
  
• Incapsula Inc - Incapsula - is a cloud-based service that makes websites safer, faster and more reliable. It provides websites of all sizes with capabilities that so far, have only been consumable by the very large Internet websites.
  
• Invincea, Inc. - Invincea Browser and Document Protection - is a virtual technology protects vulnerable computers against cyber malware.
  
• Pawaa Software - pawaaFILE - is a patented file format that wraps around a native file and carries the usage policy along with it.
  
• Quaresso - Quaresso Protect On Q (POQ) - is a hardened, ephemeral browser that protects and controls browser operations and behaviour to ensure that the web session and its content are protected from theft or data leakage from malware or end users.
  
• Silver Tail Systems - Mitigation - this gives the business owner the flexibility to adjust a website's business flows to prevent bad actors without impacting legitimate users.
  
• Symplified - Symplified Trust Cloud - is a unified access management and federation platform built on the Amazon EC2 cloud platform that uniquely integrates and secures SaaS, IaaS, EC2 and Web 2.0 apps.

Entersect advantages

• Advantages of the Entersect ITA system include:
  
• Phishing, MITB, MITM, keystroke logging and any other forms of user impersonation is impossible.
  
• Transaction rejections can immediately be flagged and the user contacted or account placed under review.
  
• Non-repudiation is ensured since each transaction is digitally signed by the user's private key.
  
• Self-service options may also be made available inside ITA applications: Check balances, activate/deactivate cards, limit changing.
  
• Certificate is not tied up to the SIM-card (or phone number), so user is free to change SIMs (for example when travelling overseas) and no pre-arrangement with mobile operators are necessary when using the system, since everything is stored on the handset, not the SIM.
  
• All communications are packet data (IP based), which means that institutions save millions of dollars in SMS (text) costs.
  
• Entersect ITA application can be remotely launched on user's handset by binary SMS if necessary.
  
• OTP mode (generated on the handset) when there is no GSM coverage.
  
• Transactions can be pre-approved by a user using ITA, in cases where the user knows he will enter and transact in a poor GSM covered area.

For more information, go to www.entersect.co.za