Over the years, many MassChallenge startups have recognized the immense importance of addressing potential threats. These innovative startups have developed different programs that help protect people against would-be Internet predators.’

One such MassChallenge startup is ProtonMail. This email security startup was founded in 2013 at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) by scientists striving to create a more secure and private Internet.  ProtonMail has developed an end-to-end encrypted email service that strives to protect individuals privacy and communication.

Both the Swiss Federal Data Protection Act and the Swiss Federal Data Protection Ordinance provide ProtonMail users with some of the strongest legal privacy protection in the world. ProtonMail messages never leave the companys secured environment, meaning there is no opportunity for someone to potentially intercept the encrypted messages enroute. ProtonMail also does not log user activity and has zero access to user data. The demand for this protection is high, and ProtonMail has raised over $550k on Indiegogo to protect privacy rights for all. 

Astra IDentity is another startup developing a software called PhishingGuardian SaaS that protects enterprises against Internet Phishing attacks. These attacks are often more sophisticated than regular spam being low-volume and more personalized in nature, and are therefore much more difficult to detect. Their service use proprietary big data and machine intelligence technologies to help defend corporations as well as warn people of potentially dangerous emails. 

Crypteia Networks is a MassChallenge finalist that offers threat intelligence, enabling administrators to get a new layer of defense by identifying attack and mitigation paths for unknown threats during their infancy and attacks that passed unoticed within heterogeneous networks. This is achieved by analyzing logs, produced from already deployed defenses, and correlated with its ThreatDB and behavioral models. This is happening in a non-intrusive and OS independent way as to expand existing infrastructure visibility and lifespan.

Tinfoil Security is a high tech MassChallenge alumni that was developed in response to the lack of security on the Internet. The software lets you scan your website for vulnerabilities to fix them quickly and easily. 

Originally founded to help combat drug counterfeiting online, Sproxil is a startup that developed Mobile Product Authentication technology that ensures that customers buy only genuine medicine. This technology however, can be applied to greater overall brand protection and marketing initiatives in a wide range of industries.   

Everything we do on the Internet is essentially public in one way or another. The Internet is the world of the Public Domain; this public accessibility, although convenient, often leaves us at a disadvantage because people can exploit it if they wish to. These startups are working to put an end to this exploitation and protect us as we explore the rapidly expanding frontier of the world wide web and unlock new innovations.