Corrata phone security tech looks to further growth with Three deal

Corrata is a software business that is designed to reduce the risk of scams on mobile devices. The technology sits on the device, silently monitoring all of the traffic going to and from it, then intervenes when it identifies something suspicious.

Based in Blackrock in Co Dublin, the firm was founded by Colm Healy and Brendan McDonagh in 2016 and currently has ten staff.

“Both myself and Brendan have worked in the mobile technology space for many years. Brendan worked on the network side while I worked on the device side,” Healy told the Business Post.

“We saw that phones were very exposed, and that there was an opportunity to port the kind of security measures that you typically find on a network to the phone itself. That’s a huge advantage, as it provides network-grade security protection without impinging on privacy.”

The first four years of the business were spent primarily on research and development, as the challenge of miniaturising the technology to work on a handset was challenging.

“It’s quite a complex piece of engineering to minimise heavy stuff that was happening on networks down to something that would work on a phone without killing the battery or interfering with the way the phone operates. It took us a number of years to get that right,” said Healy.

“Since 2020, we’ve been growing the business aggressively. In 2021 and I expect 2022, we’ll grow our revenues by 100 per cent.”

All of the monitoring happens privately on the handset, which means no record is kept anywhere else. This is particularly relevant for protecting the vast majority of activity on the handset, which is benign, to ensure user privacy while using a phone issued by an employer.

“It’s only when something of concern arises from a security perspective [that] there is a need to alert the business. We sell to organisations that allow employees to access corporate applications on a mobile phone. Today that means every business, large or small,” Healy said.

“We’ve partnered with Three Ireland who are selling it on to its business customers, and we’re using that as a channel to grow our business.”

Corrata is part of the high-potential start-up unit (HPSU) within Enterprise Ireland. Healy said this assistance has created new opportunities for Corrata.

“They’ve supported us both through advice and with access to their overseas offices to aid in international marketing. More recently, they’ve provided us with grant support to pursue a number of feasibility studies to allow us to expand our capabilities,” Healy said.

To date, the business has raised €1.7 million in funding. There are no short-term plans to raise further investment but Healy expects this to eventually change.

“The nature of our business is that it’s rapidly growing. In order to accelerate that growth it’s always good to have access to more resources. We may choose to raise further funds in order to support that expansion.”

This Making It Work article was produced in partnership with Enterprise Ireland