Sector: Technology
Principals: Mike Anderson, Karl Swannie
Year launched: 2022
Unique selling proposition: Ability to move data worldwide while staying compliant with international privacy-related regulations.
Strategy: Creation of an AI- driven system with high-level privacy protection while still delivering results.
Website: intlabs.io
In 2021, Karl Swannie and Mike Anderson sold Echosec Systems (a 10-to-Watch victor in 2016) and planned to retire. Echosec is a web-based platform that aggregates content from many sources, such as social media, news and the dark web, to help organizations detect online data incursions.
But Swannie, a twofer UVic degree holder (science and geography) and Anderson, another double-degree earner (applied science and computer engineering), got restless. The itch to develop both a team and product meant they scratched off flying lessons and fishing trips. By 2022, the duo formed Intlabs (intelligence labs), with Swannie as CEO and Anderson as CTO.
“At Echosec, we became experts in legal and compliance,” says Swannie. At Intlabs, the two have taken the data- governance knowledge they developed at Echosec and created ORIGIN, a smart data governance platform that enables users to safely share, store, redact and work with diverse data sets. ORIGIN uses AI to scan content using access rules based on the data protection legislation relevant to that specific data, user and use situations. Based on the input information, ORIGIN will look at vast troves of data protection policies and legislation and generate recommended rules and explanations that show why the data sharing may violate legislation.
“Large companies want to comply with the law, but it’s very hard to comply,” Swannie says, citing the complexities and abundance of rules around privacy in a worldwide landscape. Given what they’ve learned since Echosec days, Swannie and Anderson put data validation at the forefront. “We’ve had so many privacy conversations with privacy advocates, we’re now big advocates of privacy,” Swannie says. “So, very few offer what we offer.”
Intlabs is now piloting, under a five-year contract, the ORIGIN prototype with the federal government’s Public Safety Canada department, Anderson says. All levels of government, as well as large companies, would also be suitable customers.
“Fewer people are tasked with data analysis and there’s a big gap to use data for people’s benefit,” Anderson says.
Since Intlabs launched, the duo have added three more staff and plan to further expand. “We want to grow the company to look after the team,” Swannie says.
