Securing Mobile Work Without Putting Data on the Device With Hypori

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[00:00:29] What if the biggest weakness in mobile security is the device that we're trying so hard to protect? Well, my guest today is Jared Shepard, and he went from being a homeless high school dropout to serving in the army, learning IT, building companies, and creating technology designed for people operating in some of the most hostile environments that you can imagine.

[00:00:55] Fast forward to present day, and my guest is the CEO of Hypori. And he's going to be joining me today to explain why his biggest competitor isn't another cyber security company, but our habits. How removing sensitive data from the device could completely change the way we think about mobile security.

[00:01:17] And also, why AI is shrinking that window between discovering a vulnerability and exploiting it from months to minutes. Now, one thing I can promise you today is you will have more than a few aha moments, and this should transform the way that you think about mobile security. Completely different mindset. And my guest is just one of those guys I could chat to for hours, so I can't wait to get him on. So, enough from me. Let me introduce you to my guest now.

[00:01:48] So, thank you for joining me on the podcast today. Can you tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do? I appreciate you having me. So, my name is Jared Shepard. I'm the CEO of a software security company called Hypori, which is a highly secure virtual mobile operating system. I'm the founder and chair of a nonprofit called Warriors Ethos, and a very lucky and happy father of three.

[00:02:15] So, you are an incredibly busy guy. And before we talk about everything that you're doing now, I'd love to find out a little bit more about your origin story, in particular with Hypori. I feel like there's lots of paths that would have led you there. But what problem did you see organizations experiencing that would lead you to building this? I mean, my origin story is kind of atypical anyways. I mean, I was a high school dropout homeless kid that joined the army to get off the streets.

[00:02:44] Served originally in the infantry. I got a chance to go through sniper school as a young buck and do some other cool stuff. But what that gave me was it gave me a genuine perspective of the end user, like the person on the edge. Along the way, I learned IT. I founded my first company 20 years ago, actually almost to the day now. Out of that company, I spun what is now Hypori.

[00:03:08] Once I recognized that we had something that I believed was going to be globally impactful, like change the way that technology works on the edge. My first company was an IT professional services company. It was largely focused on helping a warfighter inside of Iraq and Afghanistan do really hard problem sets. So the hardest IT problems, but in a battlefield. So we were doing really cool stuff there.

[00:03:33] And along the way, I stumbled into this requirement where we needed to be able to empower people to use a mobile device. But not just any mobile device. We wanted to empower people to be able to go into a country maybe that they weren't supposed to be in, buy a phone off of a local host nation market, be able to use that phone on a known, probably compromised phone, on a known compromised network, and still not get compromised, right? Still be able to interact with a secure enterprise.

[00:04:01] That requirement, or really the technology that we built that became, that is what Hypori is today. And what our realization was is like, okay, we solved this problem for this device, but the idea that this device is probably already compromised, the network is probably already compromised. And so you could securely communicate with an enterprise environment, like a corporate enterprise environment, a government enterprise environment, a banking enterprise environment,

[00:04:27] and do so in a manner in which the data never touches the network, and it never actually touches the edge device. So it can't be compromised in transit, and it can't be compromised on the edge device. And because we assumed that this phone was already broken, the really cool side effect was, you get to keep all your privacy. Because I don't want to know what's on the phone anyways, because I don't trust it. Wow. What an incredibly cool sort. You're one of the coolest people I've met. I mean, before we even talk about what you're doing,

[00:04:56] you've got a Thor's hammer sitting behind you as well. I mean, I've got to ask though, how did your military and cybersecurity background, how did all these worlds collide and shape the way that you approach the problem itself? Oh, if you believe in chaos theory, it's probably somewhere under that, you know, where it was a random set of events, you know, that pushed me to the edge of break on chaos, but also enabled me to probably be more capable, more responsive, have a better understanding,

[00:05:25] not just of the problem set, but also what the person on the edge needs. And I've tried to really build all of my organizations around the idea of the person who's actually going to be using the product, right? And rather than, you know, I don't really care about shareholder value. It's still my company, although my investors would hate for me to say that, but that's not the focus. The focus isn't shareholder value. The focus isn't building a company worth a lot of money.

[00:05:50] The focus is solving a hard problem for people, right? For, you know, not just, you know, individuals, but also for governments, for organizations. Like how can we move where the whole world is moving, you know, to a mobile environment and do so in a secure way? And I've, whether it's my nonprofit, which is really me trying to find a way to give back to other veterans like me so that they can go become the next version of me, or my company is trying to solve really hard problems for edge users. That's kind of what we do.

[00:06:21] And for any business leader listening, hearing about virtual mobile infrastructure for the first time, how does it compare with other areas that they may have heard of, like mobile device management, mobile application management? What's the key differences there? A lot. And in fact, it's like, unfortunately, I'm not like Chevy trying to sell against Ford. I'm not trying to tell you why my pickup truck is, you know, my trim is better than your trim or my engine is better than your engine.

[00:06:48] I feel like I'm more like Tesla trying to sell against Chevy. And in that, yeah, we have four doors and four wheels, but that's about where the similarities end. Everything else is different. And so from an MDM standpoint, the principle of MDM is mobile device management. It's managing the device. Our principle is assume the device is already compromised and you don't want to manage it anyways. Right? So we would prefer to protect the enterprise

[00:07:15] and never put the data on the network or on the edge device. Whereas mobile device management, its whole purpose is to try to, as best as it can, lock this device down so that this device doesn't present as a risk. If you look at like the zero trust principles of, that everybody espouses all the time, and they all talk about how everybody's zero trust. But most of these people who say they're zero trust, they start by telling you, I first have to trust the device. That's not zero trust. That's just managed trust.

[00:07:44] 100% with you. And listening to you there, obviously this has got great appeal for government and military, etc. But was there a moment when you realized that a high-poor actually could be much bigger than just a government-focused solution and useful for the enterprise too? Tell me about that moment. It did. So my epiphany was, you know, it was actually kind of a couple fold. One was when I realized I could do this for government, right? I could take a known compromised phone and enable you to use it to communicate in a secure enterprise

[00:08:13] with no risk to the enterprise. But the interesting side effect, like I said, was because I assume the phone is already compromised, we don't want to know, Hypori doesn't want to know what's on your personal phone, which means you get to keep absolute privacy. So then, you know, when you start to pull that thought chain and you go, okay, wait a second. So who needs the ability to communicate with a protected set of information from a device that the individual would prefer the device belongs to them and they don't want any oversight.

[00:08:43] They don't want Big Brother having access to or control of their personal device. Yeah. Oh, well, that's everybody, right? And then you take it one step further. My wife gave me this great epiphany where she one day was like, hey, when can I have Hypori? And I was like, why would you want Hypori? And she said, you know, well, it's a mobile device, right? And I was like, yeah, kinda. And she's like, so if I lose this thing, I don't lose anything, right? And I was like, yeah.

[00:09:13] And she's like, okay, so then why can't I bring the big one with all the cameras to the kids event? And why can't I bring a little flippy one with me when I go out with my girlfriends to dinner? She's like, why can't I change out my phone the way I change out my purse? And I was like, oh crap, this is way bigger. And then I'll take it even one step further. This is a mobile operating system that runs in cloud at the speed and power of cloud. So I can use data center like processing, bandwidth, RAM

[00:09:43] on a device on the edge that can access it. So what if I could give you a more powerful computer than you could buy from any computer store and I can let you access it from your 72 inch TV on the wall from an application with a wireless keyboard and mouse. And what if we could all do it for 10, 15 bucks a month? Yeah, yeah. It changes the way that we think about compute, right? It changes the way that we think about edge. And so that's when I really fell in love with the idea

[00:10:11] of what this could be so much bigger than simply just government communications. And I mean, on one side of the coin here, this is great for the greater good and it solves a real problem. But then I've got the question I've got to ask you, probably know what I'm going to ask you, but what about when the bad guys get hold of this? The people with the burner phones and shady activity and stuff. Where do you stand on that? Or it's obviously something you must get asked a lot. So the core of the technology,

[00:10:40] the idea of the technology, if I become a mainstream global business to consumer use case, that would become a problem set. Now, the beauty of me being my background and where I come from and being the CEO of the company now and my board backing me is that so far, I am still allowed to make the decision of who we sell to and we don't sell to bad actors. I don't, you know, having myself spent four years in war,

[00:11:08] I have what I feel is a fair understanding of who our friendlies are and who they aren't. And I'm all about, like, trying to help 5i countries or NATO countries, you know, in enhancing their security and protecting against people who would otherwise exploit them. I am not chasing the dollar, so I really don't care about people who I believe are interested in exploitation and I don't want to enable them with my technology. So I hope for as long as we possibly can, we can prevent this technology

[00:11:36] for being used for the wrong reasons. And Hypori is in its completely own category here. I'm curious, how do you explain to business customers who are used to buying those traditional mobile security tools and how do you get that message across to them? Is it almost a eureka moment when the penny drops and they just get it? Or do you have difficulty getting that message across? A good mentor and friend of mine is the CISO of one of the largest cloud companies in the world.

[00:12:06] And when he looked at this, he said, look, it took me about 15 minutes of talking to you until I had my aha moment. And that's what it is. It's the aha moment. And he was like, and then after that, this is one of the coolest techs I've seen in 10 years, right? And so it's for us, it's trying to figure out how to get people to that aha moment where you actually understand what this is. It represents a different way of doing business. So it's funny. It's like my biggest competitors are not like, you know, the largest MDM vendor in the world is Microsoft.

[00:12:35] My biggest competitor is not Microsoft. My biggest competitor is habit. It's people's habits, right? So like, if you remember when the seatbelt came out, nobody wanted to put it on, right? And everybody made arguments that it was actually more dangerous than not having it on, or it was inconvenient, or regulation is not fair. You shouldn't tell us we have to wear a seatbelt. But we figured out over time, it was actually better for society. It's better. It's safer. It's saved millions of lives, right?

[00:13:04] And it's fundamentally changed transportation safety, right? That's what we're fighting. We're fighting habit. We're fighting the fact that most people out there are going to go, wait, you do what? Like, I don't know. We use MDM, or we use MAM, or they say, well, I'm going to use secure containers on my phone, and that's good enough. Well, no, it's not. Because a secure container is only good while the data is at rest. The minute the processor touches that data and decrypts it to use, it's exposed to everything that's compromised

[00:13:34] on that device. So, you know, it's our argument is fundamentally the habit has to change. You don't actually need to transmit your data to the edge device. One of my, one of my, my CISO actually just wrote this great article and it talked about, he compared it to the old school idea of putting your money in an armored car and sending it from one bank to another bank. We don't need to transport money that way anymore, right? We also don't have to transport data that way anymore either.

[00:14:03] It doesn't have to sit on every edge device out there and be individually protected and encrypted. It can simply be accessed and interacted with from any edge device while protected in one centralized environment. It's such important work you're doing here. Everyone in the, well, most people listening to this will have one smartphone, maybe even two, one for their personal life, one for work and they carry around their whole lives on these devices and we have gone

[00:14:33] 15 minutes into a tech podcast without mentioning AI but AI is coming to all those devices too. So how are you seeing AI changing the threat landscape especially when it comes to mobile devices, remote access and protecting sensitive business don't you? Massively. I mean, I think AI is our generation's version of splitting the atom and it will be that impactful. You know, the difference is when we figured out how to split the atom we figured out it could be used for good or for bad. You know, it could be used to make a bomb

[00:15:03] or it could be used to create endless power. But the difference is that there was only a handful of countries out there that had the ability to split the atom. Now the average 13-year-old has access to AI. Yeah. Right? And the implications of that are just absolutely massive. When you look at Anthropic's mythos and really they didn't build mythos to be what it is, it just happened to be a really good model when it came to the ability to understand zero-day and how to write exploitations around

[00:15:32] zero-day, right? Well, the Chinese are either rapidly chasing that same type of capability or are already there and we don't know it yet. And there's multiple other threat actors that are going to pursue the open source variations of those exact same things. So now what happens when, like it used to be in an IT infrastructure environment, you know, patching was measured in weeks or months. Like, did you do your monthly patching? Patching Tuesdays, right? Everybody is patching Tuesdays. With technology

[00:16:02] like mythos, that patching window is now measured in minutes, right? The time in which that data can be exploited on the edge device is measured in minutes. And I would argue that that attack surface is just unsustainable to protect. Like, there's a great podcast out there from the chief product guy out of Anthropic. And at the end of it, they asked, well, what are you willing to do that's going to be really impactful to the world now that you've done all this other really cool stuff? And he says,

[00:16:32] I want to figure out a way to help people protect 30% of the world's infrastructure, which is still on Windows 7. Right? And like, if you think about that, you let that sink in, like where does that world's infrastructure sit? Well, that's ATMs, that's banking, that's power infrastructure, that's like this massive portion of infrastructure that's not end-user compute, but it's the things that end-user compute relies upon every day. AI is going to attack and change and exploit and hopefully eventually make

[00:17:01] more efficient all of that. And just to hammer home that aha moment to everybody listening, Hypori removes the physical device from the security equation by ensuring sensitive data never reaches the end point. But what does that approach make possible for companies that are struggling to maybe balance security, employee privacy, and the demand to work from anywhere on any network? Because it's quite a balancing act, isn't it? Yeah, so I mean, and actually it comes back to the AI conversation too, which is like,

[00:17:31] how do I also use AI inside of my company but not expose my AI to the world or all of the things that it learns to the world? Like, I don't want to expose my IP, et cetera. How does a small company be able to invest in the same type of infrastructure that the largest companies, the Fortune 50 of the world, you know, invest in? Small companies can't afford that. Well, what we hope is, is I believe Hyporia will be more impactful in the small and medium-sized businesses than it will be on large businesses simply because

[00:18:01] it offers an economical way to reduce that attack infrastructure, to reduce that attack surface, right? It essentially fundamentally takes the edge device out of the equation of the attack surface. So when you think about how do I manage, how do I protect, how do I monitor, how do I update and patch? Well, if it's all inside of a closed cloud infrastructure that's simply accessed from any edge device to include your employees' personal devices, that simplifies your management

[00:18:31] infrastructure by order of magnitude. I'm curious, there's so many threats out there, there's so many different things that you're seeing. What makes you optimistic about the future from everything that you're seeing? And adoption of Hypori as well, what excites you about where you see this whole heading? Look, again, I mentioned chaos theory before. I'm a bit of a chaos theory guy. Personally, I have thrived when the world is in chaos. I believe the best change occurs

[00:19:01] when we are in some state of chaos. We have to be uncomfortable. We as technologists, we as security folks, we as entrepreneurs, business people, we need to be uncomfortable with the way that we do business and constantly reassessing to ensure that we're improving on a daily basis. Because every day we're not growing or improving is a day that we're dying. And so from a business standpoint, that's why I

[00:19:31] believe in the idea of being certified, security certified, certified as a technologist, certified, but that certification is as good as the minute in which it was printed. And then the minute afterwards, it's out of date. And so we have to have this constant evolution where we're constantly challenging ourselves to improve, to be better, to update, to patch, to introduce new technologies, new methodologies. So I just, I think the future is bright,

[00:20:01] but it's full of chaos. I absolutely love that. Such a powerful message you're sending there. And as you said, we are or should be in a constant state of evolution. Some out there maybe not so much, but that's a different story. But on a personal note, I mean, you're somewhat of an inspiring story from being homeless, high school dropout, serving in the army, building a cybersecurity company, truly inspirational. But I've got to ask, what did those experiences teach you about leadership, resilience,

[00:20:31] building a company that other entrepreneurs and business leaders can learn from? So much growth in that story there. But what are your big takeaways? So, a lot. For me, the military was my saving grace, right? It created my foundation simply because it taught me the fundamentals of leadership, right? And if you've ever heard of leaders eat last, the idea is that if you're a leader, you're accountable, which means your people get taken care of first. Now, you can then go to a

[00:21:01] different methodology and go like the idea of the first team concept. And that first team is not actually the people you're responsible for. It's your peers and the people above you and ensuring that they're successful. And by doing so, you actually make the people that you're responsible for successful as well, right? So, be a sponge. Don't take any one methodology as the absolute methodology, right? It is some combination of all of those things, plus your experience, plus your personality,

[00:21:31] in the way in which we can be successful, right? I do believe in leading from the front and live the ethos in which you're asking other people to follow. From a business standpoint, you know, if you're a brand new entrepreneur and you're getting ready to start, make sure you go out and read and ask and seek mentorship because nobody got here by themselves, right? Everybody here has been mentored into where we are.

[00:22:01] I would say founder, investor is a great book that I wish I had read before I ever took my first C Brown investment. You know, but it's not just the books, it's the technology, it's the methodology, it's the people. And I often get people who misunderstand and they say, well, you worked so hard, that's how you were able to be so successful. I'm like, well, a janitor works hard. That doesn't make them successful, right? It takes more than that. It takes working hard plus being receptive to

[00:22:31] mentorship, which means you have to be actively seeking mentorship, which means you have to actually be receptive to the idea that you don't know the answer and somebody else might know a better answer than you. And by the way, if you sit and talk to that janitor who worked for 20 years, he's got something to teach you. And it's whether or not you can take that teaching and adapt that into your personal, you know, methodology to make your organization successful. Wow. 100% with you. I always say try and learn something from

[00:23:01] every single person that you meet there. And on the subject of mentorship there, I think none of us are able to achieve success, as you said, without a little help along the way. And very often people enter our lives, maybe at various stages, that they have an impact on us and that we're grateful for and carry with us for the rest of our lives. But very often those people are blissfully unaware of the help that they gave us at that time. Is there anybody that you look back on and that you're grateful towards? Or maybe we give a little shout out to today. Is there anyone like that?

[00:23:31] We could spend an hour on me listing the amount of people that I'm grateful for. But I mean, it goes from my best friend growing up who gave me a loan out of his own 401k to help me get my first company started, to a guy named General Ray Odierno who encouraged me to start my first company with General Joe Anderson, to General Petraeus, to, I mean, you name it. My peers that I work with today that I've learned so much for, my first set of investors, Bill Conroy and Ray

[00:24:00] Lane, who, like me, Ray Lane helped build Oracle. You know, him and Larry Ellison started Oracle. Why in the world he believed in me and invested in me? And he was the first investor I ever talked to. And he simply said, I believe you, Jared, how much money do you want? And then they wrote their largest check in their history to help start Hypori. I am beyond blessed by people who have gone out of their way. And what I would offer to you is that you don't have to look for that miracle person to be your mentor.

[00:24:29] You just have to constantly look for mentors and you will find the miracle people. Wow. I think that is a powerful moment to end on. And for people listening, Hypori is a cybersecurity and mobile access company providing secure virtual workspace, allowing users to access enterprise data from any device without storing information on the device itself. Hopefully we've hammered on that point today. People got that aha moment. The light bulb moments are going off right now. And for those people listening,

[00:24:59] where can they find out more information or connect with you and your team? I mean, the easiest place obviously would be Hypori.com, H-Y-P-O-R-I.com. Come and check out our website. Click contact us. Reach out. I'm easy to find on LinkedIn. Obviously, I'm a passionate personality, so I'm happy to help and talk to folks. I enjoy interacting with industry, especially people who have good ideas and new ideas of the way in which we could attack the problem. And if you are struggling with

[00:25:29] something when it comes to how you interact with data on the edge, how you transport data, how you protect data, whether it's in Europe or in a problematic part of the world, or simply just the way you do business every day, I mean, consider the way that we approach the problem and we'd be happy to talk to you about it. Awesome. Well, I'll add links to absolutely everything that you've mentioned there. And although this is a daily tech podcast, yes, we've talked about technology, we've talked about the solution, but in a world where there is so much noise around things like

[00:25:57] AI, for me, I'm not just saying it's you, your story, your passion really brings this stuff to life. I'm adding you to my cool guys I'm going to have a beer with in the US when I go over there, so hopefully we can meet you first. But thanks so much for sharing your story today. Really appreciate it. Looking forward to it, Neil. Thank you. Wow. Today's conversation had everything that I love about recording this podcast every single day. And it's the reason that I do it.

[00:26:26] Fascinating technology, strong opinions, a remarkable personal origin story, lessons that extend far beyond just cybersecurity and technology. And I love talking with him about why the edge is becoming increasingly difficult to defend as AI accelerates attacks. And why constant discomfort can be a powerful force for progress. But of course, one of my favourite takeaways was his advice on mentorship. Don't wait for one

[00:26:56] miracle person to come in and transform your life. Instead, keep learning from every single person you meet. Remain open to the possibility that somebody else has a better answer and the right people will appear along the way. I cannot tell you just how strongly I agree with the sentiment behind this. And it's something I try and do every single tech conference, every single outing, wherever I go, every single person I

[00:27:24] interact with, I just try and learn something from every single person. And that's why I'm currently recording 60 interviews a month as well. But I'd love to hear your thoughts. Are businesses spending too much time trying to secure every device when the smarter approach might be keeping the data off those devices all together. And tell me about your backstory, your origin story, people that have helped you, people that have inspired you, people you've learned from. I'd love to hear from you.

[00:27:54] techtalksnetwork.com You'll find out how you can work with me, come on the podcast, 4,000 interviews, or meet me at an event on the show floor. Let me learn something from you. But that is it for today. So thank you for listening as always. Speak with you again tomorrow. Bye for now. Bye for now. Bye. Bye.