Investing In Encryption
Bring Your Crypto to Cloud Day: Why the Future of Encryption Depends on Innovation in the Cloud
At Gula Tech Adventures, we’ve long believed that secure file storage and encryption aren’t just cybersecurity table stakes—they’re essential building blocks of the modern data economy. In our latest video, “Bring Your Crypto to Cloud Day,” we use humor and animation to dive into a very serious topic: the evolving landscape of cryptography, and why investors and technologists need to start thinking beyond traditional file security.
Below, I’ll break down the key themes from the video, the technologies we’re watching (and investing in), and four of the most pressing cybersecurity problems encryption startups must solve to protect the future of data.
Encryption Confusion: Still a Problem in 2025
Despite decades of cybersecurity awareness campaigns, public understanding of encryption remains minimal. In the animated short that opens our video, we poke fun at how little the average user knows about symmetric keys, homomorphic encryption, or even certificate chains. Most people think "VPN equals safety" or that deleting browser history is enough.
But underestimating encryption’s role is dangerous. As attackers get smarter—and quantum computers loom closer on the horizon—the need for resilient, scalable, and flexible cryptographic solutions becomes even more urgent.
What Kind of Encryption Are We Talking About?
This isn’t about cryptocurrencies or blockchain.
We’re focused on:
Encryption at rest: Protecting data stored on drives, in the cloud, or across hybrid environments.
File-level encryption and control: Ensuring that data stays encrypted when accessed, shared, or moved.
Post-quantum cryptography (PQC): Algorithms designed to remain secure even when quantum computers can break RSA and ECC.
File sharding and zero-trust storage models: Making it impossible to reconstruct a file without knowing how and where it's split across multiple clouds.
Companies Solving Real Encryption Challenges
We've invested in several companies tackling different parts of the encryption and secure storage puzzle:
SecureCircle (acquired by CrowdStrike): Offered persistent file encryption enforced at the endpoint. It protected files even after exfiltration—ideal against insider threats or ransomware. A great agent-based solution for sensitive use cases, but tough to scale without central control.
RackTop Systems: Delivers military-grade file storage with encryption, access controls, and behavioral monitoring. Designed for enterprise, RackTop supports file sharing via SMB, NFS, or S3 while detecting anomalies like mass downloads or unusual access patterns. It's ideal for high-assurance sectors like government, healthcare, and finance.
ShardSecure: A zero-trust solution that doesn’t encrypt at all—but shreds files into tiny fragments and distributes them across clouds. A hacker breaching any one system sees only gibberish. It's fast, scalable, and even GDPR compliant since the “file” doesn’t exist until recombined.
Each of these companies solves a different aspect of the same problem: how to securely store and share data without trusting any single cloud provider.
Four Big Problems in Encryption Today
1. Enabling Secure Cloud Workloads
We left our data centers for cloud elasticity—but we lost visibility. Today’s cloud is “someone else’s computer,” often compromised or misconfigured. Storing sensitive data on S3 buckets or Dropbox without extra controls is like locking your front door and leaving the key under the mat.
Solutions like RackTop and ShardSecure offer different paths—either by taking full control of the storage and access (RackTop) or by abstracting the file system entirely and distributing shards (ShardSecure). Encryption must not just protect data but enable secure cloud mobility, resiliency, and usability.
2. Making Secure File Sharing Usable
Secure file sharing is still a mess. Sending a zipped file with a password is not scalable, auditable, or enterprise-ready.
The holy grail is seamless sharing with visibility and control:
Drop a file into a secure folder, and only the right people can view or edit it.
Full audit logs show who accessed what and when.
Files can “self-destruct” or revoke access remotely.
Too many current solutions require running agents, only work within a vendor ecosystem (e.g., Microsoft Office), or force users to choose between usability and security.
We’re actively seeking solutions here that balance confidentiality, integrity, and availability—without annoying the end user.
3. Protecting Data at the Endpoint
Even the best cloud encryption breaks down when the decrypted file sits on a user's laptop, waiting to be copied or uploaded.
Endpoint protection for encrypted files is critical:
Detecting unauthorized file access.
Blocking data from being uploaded to GitHub, pastebin, or rogue USBs.
Preventing malware from reading decrypted copies.
This is where DLP (data loss prevention), behavioral analytics, and agent-based encryption intersect. SecureCircle had a strong agent model; RackTop monitors file activity on trusted shares. But there's still room for innovation that doesn’t require agents and works across diverse environments.
4. Preparing for the Quantum Apocalypse
Quantum computers could one day break RSA and ECC, rendering today's encryption obsolete. This has sparked a wave of startups pitching:
Quantum-resistant VPNs
Post-quantum secure file storage
Encrypted messaging with lattice-based crypto
While important, most of these aren’t investable yet. Why?
New algorithms are still being standardized (NIST PQC finalists are still settling).
Performance hits are steep—CPU costs spike dramatically.
Proving “quantum resistance” is difficult without an actual quantum attacker.
Still, the DoD is demanding quantum readiness by 2025. Companies like Enveil (we’re indirect investors) show promise by enabling computation on encrypted data without decryption, using techniques like homomorphic encryption and secure multiparty computation.
The key takeaway: building real post-quantum defenses takes more than new math—it requires integrating that math into real-world systems without wrecking performance or usability.
Humor Helps (Especially in Cyber)
“Bring Your Crypto to Cloud Day” also includes an original animation featuring a disgruntled hacker struggling with encrypted and sharded cloud targets. We believe storytelling and humor can break through the noise and get broader audiences thinking about these issues—from CEOs to SOC analysts.
Encryption might not be “funny,” but it’s necessary—and increasingly urgent.
Final Thoughts
We believe encryption is due for a renaissance—not just because of quantum fears but because we finally have the compute power and APIs to do better.
We’re looking for founders who understand:
How to balance cryptographic rigor with usability.
How to secure data in motion, at rest, and during compute.
How to disrupt legacy storage models without locking customers into a walled garden.
If that’s you, let’s talk. Reach out to us at investor@gula.tech.
And if you want to laugh while you learn, don’t miss the full “Bring Your Crypto to Cloud Day” video on our YouTube channel.
Stay encrypted. Stay resilient. Stay funny.
—Ron Gula, Gula Tech Adventures