It’s been less than two month since the launch of echoSEC, but the Victoria, B.C.-based social network mapping company says it is already receiving calls from security organizations around world interested in its technology.
The company, a spin-off from Victoria-based software company CloverPoint, is tackling a growing problem among security organizations, military and defense departments as well as organizations running supposedly secured facilities.
While these organizations may have spent millions of dollars securing their IT infrastructure and beefing up the physical security posture, information and images of their facilities still manage to get out in public in the form of status updates, tweets, images and other posts on various social media outlets, according to Karl Swannie, CEO of echoSEC.
With just a few keystrokes, almost anyone can catch a glimpse of what’s happening behind the security fences of Guantanamo Bay or even sensitive areas of Canadian military bases, the company says. Many organizations require personnel to sign non-disclosure or confidential agreements, said Swannie, but this doesn’t appear to prevent people from posting information online about their workplaces and what’s going on inside them.
EchoSEC’s solution runs on a relatively simple concept. The company provides an interactive, digital map to a customer. With a cursor the user can draw boundary around an area to be searched. Once the boundary is drawn, the technology starts drawing out the social posts being made inside the site.
Companies can use the social media tracking site to determine if employees are posting material to social sites that could be detrimental to the company. EchoSEC also have some social marketing possibilities for companies seeking feedback on their campaigns.
A demonstration site accessible for free, pulls feeds from Tweeter, Instagram, Picassa and Foursquare
EchoSEC is now working on a version for the defence and security industries as well as for enterprises. That site can be configured to draw from up to 480 media feeds and will continually update.