Samsung has acquired College Park-based mobile security company Tachyon, a spinoff of the local cybersecurity company Kaprica Security. The deal closed for an undisclosed amount.
Tachyon has been working closely with Samsung in the past two years to automatically configure hundreds of Samsung enterprise devices with various security measures and settings. So rather than have an employer set up each individual phone for all of their employees, they can have their IT teams use Tachyon to set up each phone at the same time.
With Tachyon technology, device setup shrinks from days or hours to just minutes. So Kaprica Security CEO said the acquisition just made sense.
"We’ve been working with them on deals for years now, and we were able to get a lot of traction because we acted as a standard differentiator when people were deciding on products," he said.
As a part of the acquisition, two employees from Tachyon are now Samsung employees. All other Tachyon employees are now working on different projects within Kaprica.
Before being acquired, Tachyon worked with organizations like the Department of Defense, hospital systems and vehicle fleets in the U.S. and Europe.
Kaprica CEO Doug Britton said he hopes the acquisition will allow Kaprica to focus more on their latest initiative, RunSafe, a series of technologies focusing on smart devices in transportation, IoT and energy sectors. Britton wants to see RunSafe continue to develop technologies based on the ideas they've patented over the past few years.
"We want to be able to dedicate marketing resources and things like that," Britton said. "Security software is a tough business. It’s kind of like selling insurance. People can’t really price it until they’ve been compromised."
Image used via CC 2.0 - credit Carlos Varela
