Allpriv Military-Grade Cyber Security For The At-Home Workforce

The computer market has experienced an insane 34% increase in 2020 because of a massive number of workers under a “work at home” mandate.

Working at home can be challenging because of the lack of human interactions and distractions, but it has also vastly increased the “attack surface” for potential corporate hacking.

Allpriv’s LPS (Laptop Pocket Server) Enterprise Home Office Edition provides a security device that aims to protect the internet connection and also other vectors such as the USB ports, with minimal knowledge and interaction from the user.

An Attack surface designates the aggregate potential entry points for hackers/attackers. For example, if 1000 employees go to the office and use their computers inside the corporate network. A hacker would need to breach the premises or the corporate network, both of which are defended by IT professionals.

When an employee works remotely either from a public café, airport, or home, the network is less safe. The laptop might be more accessible from the public internet (unfiltered) and even physically accessible.

The Allpriv Laptop Personal Shield is essentially a small security computer server that connects to the user’s laptop. Once connected and powered up, it will surveil things such as USB ports and the internet connection.

"THE ALLPRIV LAPTOP PERSONAL SHIELD IS ESSENTIALLY A SMALL SECURITY COMPUTER SERVER"

For example, it can ensure that Internet Packets are not routed through strange routes to be potentially intercepted for later processing. It can also verify that the internet access goes through a secure virtual private network (VPN) to the corporate server.

The company claims to be using the latest technologies such as Blockchain and A.I to run its security, but without a deeper dive into the details, we cannot comment on that and only looked at the promised functionality.

The “server in a dongle” nature of this product is a protection in itself because one would need physical access to hack it, which is much more complicated than creating a fake anti-virus installer, for example.

Perhaps the most crucial aspect of LPS is that the user only needs to plug it. When it comes to security, the more frictionless it is, the more secure it will be. Allpriv claims that it reduces user security-related interactions by a staggering 90%.

The more actions the user has to take and the more holes you’ll have in your cybersecurity, it’s that simple. LPS is also supposed to reduce IT security-maintenance of a laptop fleet by 15X, a bold claim that we cannot independently verify at the moment.

Allpriv says that it is working with some military branches and can customize the dongle for large corporate customers. Their business model is based on a subscription fee, in addition to the one-time sale of the LPS device.

The company was created in 2018, and Mickael Leal, its current CEO, is the public face of Allpriv, representing their R&D team composed of veteran engineers. Here’s the link to the Allpriv CES virtual booth (you must be registered and signed-in).

Allpriv is part of the French Tech delegation at CES 2021, you can check our coverage here and connect with the other French Tech startups here on the CES 2021 website (requires registration).

Eliane Fiolet
Categories: Computers
Tags: CES, CES 2021, cybersecurity, FrenchTech, Security, VPN