Surety Announces $2 Million in Funding and Appoints New Chief Executive Officer
Surety, Inc., a leading provider of data integrity solutions, today announced that it has received $2 million in funding from Zenerji LLC, headed by Addison Fischer, an original investor in the company and an information security pioneer. The new capital will be used primarily for sales and marketing. In addition, the company announced the appointment of 15-year software industry veteran Tom Klaff as Chief Executive Officer. Klaff brings to Surety a new focus to expand the company’s data integrity service to help customers guarantee the trustworthiness of their electronic records. Specifically, Surety is focusing on corporate governance, regulatory compliance, and intellectual property protection in the financial/accounting, pharmaceutical, legal, electronics, government, and technology industries.
Zenerji LLC was one of the original investors in Surety and has made similar early investments in RSA, Xcert, VeriSign, and other successful security companies. “The timing is right for Surety’s powerful, patented technology,” says Fischer. “With aggressive new mandates for corporate governance—like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002—and strong new regulatory compliance requirements, the market demand for perpetual data integrity assurance has never been higher. Enterprises, accounting firms, and legal practices must quickly step up to the challenge of automatically assuring the integrity of their electronic records or face extreme costs for legal defense and exposure to severe corporate risk. Surety is at the right place at the right time.”
Surety (http://www.surety.com) delivers the only long-lived, tamperproof data integrity solution in the world. The company’s AbsoluteProofSM Solution Suite automatically generates irrefutable evidence of exactly what electronic records were created, precisely when. With Surety’s patented, cryptographically verifiable technology, corporate executives, compliance officers, general counsel, patent attorneys, and others can prove the integrity of their electronic records indefinitely. The AbsoluteProof Solution Suite is the industry’s only high-volume data integrity system—proven to handle nearly one billion production transactions. To date, Surety has authenticated over a million records that have been submitted in support of court proceedings—without challenge.
“Traditionally, companies have relied on cumbersome paper documents or short-lived digital signatures in an attempt to protect their records and information assets,” says Tom Klaff, CEO of Surety. “Both of those methods, however, are vulnerable to tampering and rely on an element of human trust, which is fraught with risk. When executives approve financial statements or testify in court, they must have complete confidence that their electronic records have not been altered or backdated. Surety provides irrefutable, mathematical proof that validates both the contents and time of creation of electronic records. With that evidence in hand, enterprises can easily verify compliance with regulations, ownership of intellectual property, and the authenticity of electronic records.”
As Surety’s new CEO, Klaff will lead the company’s efforts to broaden its customer base. He will also be responsible for formulating and executing the broader business plan for Surety, focusing on opening critical vertical markets and forging new relationships with key channel partners.
Prior to joining Surety, Klaff served as Chairman, President, and CEO of Reliacast Inc., a leading digital media software company. As a founder of Reliacast, he secured $41 million in funding and led the company from a concept stage to revenue generation and market leadership in the telecom and enterprise markets.
Posted: Monday, March 17, 2003