Fifteen months after it formed a partnership with Hitachi Solutions America, TitanFile has launched its advanced Credeon browser technology to allow users to encrypt files that they store and share on the cloud.
TitanFile, which has developed an easy-to-use, secure collaboration and document-sharing system, began life in Halifax four years ago and is now headquartered in Waterloo. The company’s sales and user base have both tripled in the past year, and it is now launching this new product to further strengthen its offerings.
“We are the first, and only, software service that offers this kind of technology to the legal market and other professional services,” said President and Chief Operating Officer Tony Abou-Assaleh in an interview last week.
TitanFile began as a secure file-sharing product and has evolved into a Software-as-a-Service product that allows users to securely collaborate over documents without having to download or install any software or plugins.
In January 2014, the company struck a partnership with Hitachi Solutions America and signaled they would work together on an encryption device that could benefit TitanFile customers.
Though most cloud solutions that store files claim to be secure, Abou-Assaleh explained that they can be hacked, thus compromising the security of the file’s owner. So a second-layer of protection is to encrypt files that are kept on the cloud.
Abou-Assaleh said the Credeon browser technology allows the simple encryption of files so lawyers and other professionals can protect their files without going through the hassles downloading software or using a plugin.
The launch of the Credeon product caps off a year of strong growth for the company, whose main client markets are the legal profession, finance and insurance. TitanFile was used by 3,000 to 4,000 professionals a year ago and now it has about 10,000 professional users. As well as its headquarters in the Accelerator Centre in Waterloo, the company now has offices in New York and Silicon Valley.
One major development of the past year was TitanFile raised an undisclosed amount of capital from Oakville entrepreneur Chris Stoate. He’d previously founded LaserNetworks Inc., which he grew into the largest independent managed print services provider in North America. He sold it to Xerox in 2012. Stoate became TitanFile’s CEO in December. Abou-Assaleh had held the position previously and became President and COO.
The company will soon announce that it has formed a few channel partner agreements with major companies that already have sales to TitanFile’s chosen markets. The idea is that these companies can now add TitanFile to the suite of products they sell to legal and financial customers.
Since it began in Halifax in 2011, TitanFile has raised funding from Innovacorp and the First Angel Network, and spent two years in the accelerator program offered by the Accelerator Centre and Communitech.
Nova Scotia remains an important market for the company, said Abou-Assaleh, as several of its key clients are based in the province. The main Atlantic Canadian presence within the company is in the board of directors, which includes David Fraser of the law firm McInnes Cooper, Dawn Umlah representing Innovacorp and Don Doucet representing FAN.
This is the first edition of “Eye on KW”, which will become a regular feature in Entrevestor providing news on the tech community in Kitchener-Waterloo.
