Secured Communications solution designed to address public-safety cybersecurity, BYOD concerns

Indeed, companies like Secured Communications were what FirstNet visionaries hoped would emerge with the establishment of a reliable nationwide broadband system for public safety, Kennedy said.

“To me, it’s part of the success [of FirstNet], that we have ingenious, disruptive technology companies that want to come in and create solutions that leverage broadband, that leverage the clouds,” Kennedy said. “You can do that now, because you can count on having a connection, you can count on having priority and preemption, you can count on having that secure connection but also having the ability to access data in other sources.

“To me, it’s absolutely complementary and the kind of company I had hoped would exist in the future.”

Wilson said that Secured Communications’ first domestic contract was with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, which used the solution successfully during a trial conducted during a 2016 presidential campaign event. Today, most of the 492 public-safety agencies requesting to use Secured Communication are in law enforcement, but the company also is beginning to gain traction with fire and EMS departments, according to Wilson and Kennedy.

Secured Communications eventually hopes its platform will expand to other critical areas, such as smart cities and the Internet of Things (IoT), Wilson said.

“It starts with public-safety communications, but that quickly lends itself to traffic lights, the Internet of Things, wearable devices, sensors, enterprise applications, and it goes on and on,” Wilson said. “All of that needs to be on a common platform. You can’t have siloed data, because that’s one of the fundamental reasons we started the company, [to help provide] privacy, productivity and interoperability.

“I see Secured Communications as the platform for communications to protect your privacy and solve interoperability. Obviously, I would love to see Secured Communications be the platform to solve these issues. And smart cities is the future, where this data has to be encrypted, protected and communicated to the correct people at the right time.”