Data is wealth.
And hard at work at WeWork's Downtown Crossing location is a startup that wants to ensure large corporations use this wealth for its intended purposes.
Tranquil Data, founded by Seth Proctor, formerly the CTO at NuoDB, and Peter Shah, who was a senior engineer at NetApp, exited stealth mode on Wednesday to enable companies to prevent "inadvertent data misuse."
"Intention is neither security nor compliance," said Proctor. "It’s the idea that data does not live in a vacuum. Our software complies with service agreements on how we will use, protect and secure user data.”
Tranquil Data's software monitors data as it’s being created to show organizations where data came from, how it was used and if it requires specific controls like isolation or segmentation.
The company raised $1.8 million in seed funding in July 2018. The round was led by Hyperplane Venture Capital, First Star Ventures and PBJ Capital also participated in the round. For now, Tranquil Data is working with companies in finance, insurance and healthcare sectors to sell its software.
Proctor noted that data sharing and protection can be challenging to enforce in large corporations because it's hard to contextualize data for a specific use case. Tranquil Data's software helps companies isolate their data for this purpose.
"Different departments get different segments of data," Proctor said.
Why is this of importance now? Proctor noted high profile data breaches at institutions like Equifax and Facebook has changed the dialogue about data protection and isolation.
"I have facebook to thank. The Equifax and Facebook events have helped people understand that those working with data don't know what the rules are," Proctor said.
Additionally, establishing clear rules around data use is imperative in the case of mergers and acquisitions. "When startups get acquired, they have to worry about this. Several forces we are seeing right now are creating a perfect storm for this," Proctor said.
The founding team of Tranquil Data were former classmates at Brown University. The company consists of six full-time employees and is scouting for a business development manager. The software is being tested in private beta.
