$50m data security company Cryptoloc signs deal with Microsoft

It took the death of his father for Jamie Wilson to leave accountancy and start a data security company that has just signed a deal with Microsoft and a potential 345 million new clients.

It was the aftermath of the death of his father that took Jamie Wilson on the journey from accountancy to founding a now $50m plus data global security company.

Coping with the loss of his father Noel to pancreatic cancer he also had the frustration of trying to manage his affairs after his death and the difficulty of obtaining much needed information.

He started to think about the creation of a data storage system that allowed users exclusive and complete control over their storage cloud which led to the creation of Cryptoloc Technology Group.

“I couldn’t understand why there was not a virtual vault that was highly secured and only in the event of death could all that critical data needed when you lose a loved one be released,” Mr Wilson said.

“It was really difficult to find dad’s information. I thought of how many other people struggled to find the information that was needed and that was the foundation of it.”

Armed with a 15-year runway on their international patents Brisbane-based Cryptoloc now has 6000 clients around the world and recently signed a game-changing deal to partner up with Microsoft, giving it access to its 345 million global users.

The data storage system that will be integrated into Microsoft 365 to allow users to have exclusive access and complete control of their storage cloud.

Forbes declared Cryptoloc as one of the 20 best cybersecurity start-ups to watch in 2020 and the integration with Microsoft 365 was solidified after 18 months of negotiations.

Cryptoloc founder and executive chairman Jamie Wilson. Picture: David Clark

Despite cracking it on the global stage with giants such as Microsoft and also Salesforce, Mr Wilson said his focus was unashamedly to help Australian small businesses.

“It’s more important than ever before to be able to protect our data. For me, this collaboration introduces more avenues to better support small business owners and provide them with the needed confidence and assurance that they have the cyber right support’’ he said.

“We are a small business ourselves with 14 employees and at the end of the day you want small businesses doing what they do best.

“You want peace of mind, you want to have control over your own cloud, and you want to make sure you are ticking all the boxes in terms of privacy. If you have that, you can get on with business.’’

The father-of-two, who grew up in the Brisbane suburb of Inala, attended Serviceton State School and then Corinda High school and before gaining a degree at the Queensland University of Technology.

After his light bulb moment after his father’s death in 2010 he travelled the world talking to leading cyber cryptographers before stating Cryptoloc two years later.

“When I came back on of my earliest engineers Drew Nicol, who had lost his mother all of a sudden, said to me `Jamie I know to exactly what you want and I will come and work with you full time’. That was how it started and he was my first employee,” Mr Wilson said.

“It’s all been done in Brisbane. I have never offshored anything. People don’t realise the talent that we have in this state.”

Mr Wilson, who is executive chairman of the Cryptoloc, is also an 86 per cent shareholder of the company with family and friends making up the rest. As well as Brisbane the company has an offices in New York and also at Cambridge in Britain.

“It’s been bootstrapped all the way along and I’ve just reinvested as I went through and that’s probably been the value of being an accountant and understanding numbers. I’ve seen a lot of companies come and go,” he said.

“We’re now in the process of moving our office and bringing on new employees, mainly from a business development side.”

Cryptoloc is a data storage system that allows users exclusive and complete control over their storage cloud.

Mr Wilson said the guiding principle for Cryptoloc was ease of use.

“My number one goal out of all of it was making it simple, making it affordable and ensuring that they did not have to have a technology degree to find a solution,” he said.

“Because it started with losing dad I wanted to make sure we catered from individual all the way up to large enterprises.”

After signing up to the service with a username and password, clients are given a unique token that gives them full and exclusive control of their data storage cloud.

Clients have total control over who can and cannot access the information with an in-built audit trail that can track any stolen data.

Neither Cryptoloc, or anyone in between, can access or run algorithms over client documents.

Once a user completes creating a document in Microsoft 365 through the Cryptoloc Cloud platform, the document is instantly versioned, uniquely encrypted and securely stored.

Sensitive business information always remains protected by incorporating in-built automatic backup, ransomware protection and recovery, end-to-end encryption, insider threat detection and secure file sharing.

“We have zero knowledge of your information. You are in complete control,’’ Mr Wilson said.

“Our goal has always been to provide our users with not only the most secure cloud storage solution but also one that is user-friendly and enhances their day-to-day operations.

“Integrating with Microsoft 365, allows us to offer our small business customers the best of both worlds – top-tier security without sacrificing convenience.’’