Entertainment, shopping, learning and saving, everything is online nowadays. With the internet boom, we also started using common online sites as a storage platform giving an invitation to fraudsters and hackers. Addressing the issue, Houm Technology Singapore Pte Ltd is ensuring data privacy, data security and data ownership of global citizens.
With the innovative concept of ‘private ownership’, Houm aims to bring privacy to the internet. “We believe that there is no reason for a few large corporations to own and have access to our digital data. Instead, it is possible for everyone to own private space legally on the internet and gain absolute privacy of the data that you store and generate there. It is much like the privacy people enjoy across the world, just like in their physical home. Our vision is to be present in 50 countries within 24 months of launch and build 2-3 billion digital Houms,” says Bijai K Jayarajan, founder and CEO Houm Technology.
Houm Technology deploys state-of-the-art data security software and encryption. All monitoring and security services are automated and deployed 24X7 to monitor hundreds of millions of Houms. “All data inside the Houm will always remain encrypted with 256-bit encryption and will be available only to the owner of that respective Houm,” adds Jayarajan.
One can safely store digital assets like photographs, documents, music files, financial documents, videos, personal entertainment content, and others. Houm starts with a base capacity of 100 GB and you can keep increasing the size as you need till up to 2TB. Jayarajan says that Houm provides people their own ‘digital home’, a place where their data and digital interactions are truly private. However, they didn’t want to be mixed up with a generic term ‘Home’, but wanted it to sound and feel like home. Apart from the site, Houm has its app available on the play store/ app store for both IOS and Android.
Telling us how users can ensure the safety of their online data at their end, Jayarajan says, “Users should not share their email passwords or the password that they use on the website for storing data with others. This will ensure that your friends or community will not be able to access the data.”
Not disclosing the exact amount, he says that the owners can buy their digital homes at the cost of a movie ticket and a tub of popcorn. People in India are somewhat comfortable, at present, because they have not yet realised the extent to which they are vulnerable to data theft. Today, there is a lot of concern in the USA and Europe about data privacy and data protection. It is just a matter of time before such concerns start growing in India, which has a huge base of internet users, believes Jayarajan.
After the Alpha launch, Houm is rolling out the whole set of new features. The initial version only allowed users to store documents and photos. They are now enhancing the product to allow owners of digital Houms to carry out private digital interactions such as instant chat, group voice calls, and group video calls, without any person or machine listening to it. New features will allow the owners to make numerous Houm neighbourhoods, store and play music and video files, etc.
“Houm is not a corporate or B2B product; it only focuses on helping end-users of the internet. It is a unique offering wherein we are providing a digital home to any internet user,” he says.
Launching its Alpha version in India, Houm is planning to launch in New Zealand and the USA soon. They are also planning to launch in five European countries and later spread to 20 other countries outside the USA and Europe.
“Houm is a fully automated product. If consumers face any problem with storage space, they can increase or decrease the space from their Houm’s ‘Config Section’. The core idea is to not have them come back to Houm Technology because their Houm is owned by them, and we also cannot get in. If there’s a payment related issue, they can mail to the official help ID and it will be addressed immediately,” says Jayarajan.
The best way for a consumer to have a private storage space on the internet today is to sign up with any of the established hosting service providers. It’s even better and more secure than having a personal server at home. “In the case of our product, when a consumer builds his/ her Houm, their back-end data is hosted with the best hosting service provider,” concludes Jayarajan.
