Local Firm Develops Software to Monitor Employees

Editor’s Note: Last week’s TechWeek erroneously reported that local startup Safe House was the recipient of $500,000 in seed funding from TechColumbus. The correct information is that Safe House has received an investment of $250,000 from the TechColumbus Pre-Seed Fund.

Jim Mazotas, 42, founder and CEO of OnGuard Systems, has successfully launched a new system named Intelligent ID.  The program is a user activity management system, or UAMS, that can be applied to an array of applications.  The origins of the program began as scribbles on a napkin nine years ago at a Bob Evans restaurant, borne from the frustration Mazotas said he experienced while working for a large software company that, he figured, had little control of its security data.

"Today, the threat is not from the outside, but from the inside," Mazotas said.

He said most corporations have adequate firewalls, encryption programs and other means to protect sensitive date from hackers.  Intelligent ID is designed to assist corporations with protecting data from their own employees, as well as monitoring employees' computer activity at work.

Not unlike the plot for the film Minority Report, in which police arrest people moments before they commit a crime, Intelligent ID monitors keystrokes and looks for behaviors that could illustrate a person is plotting a crime.  In its more general applications, Intelligent ID monitors how often an employee is updating a Facebook page or trading Tony Romo in a fantasy football league.

In a more dramatic example, the software is capable of monitoring an email while it is being composed and flagging threatening words. The program uses comprehensive key scanners and optical character recognition.

"Our mission is to stop threats to your valuable data, recover costs previously due to misuse of company resources and non-productive activities, and improve regulatory compliance," Mazotas said.

Intelligent ID was launched in June as a pilot program and marketed to four customers: a state government agency, a health care provider, an energy company, and a municipal government.  The program, through monitoring Internet activity and email compositions, looks for "erratic behavior" that could be a harbinger of illegal or violent activities, such as data theft, espionage or assault, Mazotas said.   Health care companies can use the program to look for suicidal tendencies manifested though social media via the Internet.

Since June, the company has sold more than 10,000 licenses to the four companies who first used Intelligent ID.

"We're quite happy with the growth," Mazotas said.

The four pilot programs have generated about $500,000 in revenue for the company. The company has a 2012 goal of $5.2 to $5.4 million in sales.

Mazotas said he laid the groundwork for Intelligent ID at the company he previously owned and sold, after scrapping another project he spent several years developing.

"What I learned there, I've used here," said Mazotas, adding that one of his partners, Winthrop Worchester, and he wrote the Intelligent ID software.

A development team of 11 employees -- a staff Mazotas expects will grow three-fold next year -- maintains and updates the program, as well as markets Intelligent ID to new clients.

Intelligent ID was nominated for "Outstanding Startup Business" and "Outstanding Product" at the Columbus Innovation Awards in 2011.

Having successfully launched Intelligent ID, Mazotas has turned his focus to his latest program called Safe House, a program that will allow parents to monitor Interact activity of their children.

See the full story: http://www.snponline.com/articles/2011/12/27/multiple_papers/news/allduintel_20111223_0521pm_2.txt