“The computer security market is moving towards abstinence do less, and you’ll get hurt less. That’s a pretty stupid attitude,” says SecureOL founder and managing director Zak Dechovich. “Excuse me if I have no respect for a $15 million market.” That is Dechovich’s way of presenting the philosophy of SecureOL, which is offering to carry out a daunting assignment to protect every computer from every existing and future virus.
”Today, you can’t hook up to the Internet without coming under fire,” Dechovich explains. “Current systems are able to identify viruses that already exist, and repair systems after the virus has already begun its destruction. What if, however, a company’s competitor has created a virus specially designed to attack that company, a virus that exists nowhere else in the world? What if it has planned an industrial espionage virus, which merely wrecks a company’s business, instead of harming its computer? We say, ‘You may get infected, but you won’t care’.”
Dechovich started working with software at age 15. He created viruses. “You wouldn’t believe what I did to my friends, but only to those who deserved it,” he says self-righteously. “Later, they took me to set up the army anti-virus unit. I did what you see in the movies. It’s always like that criminals make the best detectives.”
On the SecureOL board sits cofounders Boris Dechovich, Zak’s father, a former general director of AVX and chief scientist of Arotech (Nasdaq: ARTX), and joint chairperson Yossi Apter, the director general of the Jerusalem College of Technology. Other board members include cofounder Yaron Mayer, a school buddy of Zak Dechovich with a degree in computers, who specializes in artificial intelligence, and joint chairperson Yossi Ron, the CEO of the Mofet B'Yehuda Technological and Business Incubator, which has invested $350,000 in SecureOL. The entrepreneurs invested $150,000 of their own money.
Complete isolation of files
The idea behind SecureOL’s system sounds simple. All software, and every file, essentially operates in its own closed environment. For example, if you open a Word document, the system copies the Word program, copies the file onto it, and hermetically seals both of them from the rest of the computer. If there is a virus in the software, the worst it can do is destroy or read one file. When you save the file and close the program, the file is still kept isolated from the other files.
”It’s like a slide presentation, says Dechovich. “The slides don’t touch each other. You switch between them with one click.”
”Globes”: What happens if I want to copy an Internet file, or transfer an Excel table?
Dechovich: ”You can do it all with the usual “copy” and “paste” commands, and the virus can’t pass.”
It sounds both revolutionary and terribly simple. Is it as simple to do as it sounds?
”It’s not so simple. At a technological level, we broke records in order to put it into operation, so that every system can run properly, without any holes between the systems and the central computer. On the other hand, I agree that it’s one of those ideas that make you ask, ‘Why didn’t I think of that before?’”
Have you patented the idea, or the algorithm that makes the method possible?
”You won’t believe it, but there are 98 claims in our patent, each and every one of which was found to be valid for innovation and practicality. The patent is now in the approval stages. We spent as much on the patent as we did in development. We might be the only Israeli start-up that has done that.”
Where are you up to now?
”The product will be ready only in 2007. Meanwhile, we found ourselves a little short of resources, so we developed two intermediate products, the first of which has already been launched. VE2 is a product that separates the computer into two work environments: internal and external. This program can be installed in three minutes, without copying the operating system. It offers two different environments, between which you can switch with one click. Yes, there are other solutions in this field, but you have to shut the system down in order to install them, and they also cost four times as much.”
SecureOL has already signed an agreement with DataSec for distribution of the product in Israel. “The world has a lot of confidence in the Israeli computer security market,” Dechovich says. “If we make it here, we can make it anywhere.” At the same time, the company is also working on a second intermediate product, VEHome, a product for the household market, which divides computers into several parts. “A kid can download Kazza and make the computer crash as much as he likes, while his big sister’s computer, with important schoolwork files, is kept completely separate. You can switch between the computers with a click of the mouse. It’s not like users on Windows XP, because it doesn’t used double up infrastructure. The really innovative product will be ready in 2007.”
How do you sell a product like this? Is it sold in the market, like an anti-virus program?
”We’ll sell the intermediate products through our distributors. We want to sell the final product through OEM (the product is sold to large computer and software companies, who install it before selling their computers and operating systems, G.W.). That’s the easiest way, and we also protect ourselves from piracy that way.”
Have you also thought about selling the idea to a large corporation, with or without the company?
”We negotiated with Microsoft, but we called it off in the middle, because we got really scared. We believe in the company; it’s not for sale. We want to go for an IPO.”
Published by Globes [online] -l www.globes.co.il - on October 27, 2003