HYDERABAD: An alumnus of Hyderabad’s Indian School of Business (ISB) has come up with a first-of-its-kind solution that aims to put Internet users in charge of their own data. At a time when the country does not have any data protection law, Bijai K Jayarajan’s Houm Technology Singapore Pte Ltd lets a user own a unique domain on the Internet, which acts like a legally owned property and where people can safely store all their digital assets.
In an email interaction with Express, the ISB alumnus pointed out the differences between his product and cloud services like Google Drive or Dropbox. “The fundamental difference revolves around ownership. All the current products and solutions take away your privacy - they read your data. Then, there are products focused on privacy but without solving the ownership issue,” he said.
“When you store your data in Google Drive or Dropbox, you are actually taking your data and storing it in servers owned by these companies. Once your data is in their server, they have all the access and you lose privacy,” Jayarajan said adding that Houm provides a private space on the Internet.
As for Houm’s level of security, Bijai said that state-of-the-art data security and encryption software have been deployed in its making. “All monitoring and security services are automated and deployed 24X7 to monitor hundreds of millions of Houms. All data inside a Houm will always remain encrypted with 256-bit encryption, and will be available only to the owner of that respective Houm,” he said.
However, he contended that nothing in the digital world is unhackable. “Hacking a platform like Google Drive or Dropbox gives you access to data of hundreds of millions of consumers. So the time and effort invested into hacking is worth it. With Houm, breaking 256-bit encryption would give the hacker access to only one account.”