SensorHound demonstrates IoT operations monitoring software at the Alchemist Accelerator Demo Day

May 26, 2015  


 

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind., and SANTA CLARA, Calif. - Vinai Sundaram, co-founder and CEO of SensorHound Inc., demonstrated his company's patent-pending solution that monitors Internet of Things devices for software defects and threats at the Alchemist Accelerator Demo Day in Mountain View, Calif.

The Alchemist Accelerator is a Silicon Valley-based business incubator exclusively for startups whose revenue comes from enterprises, not consumers. During Demo Day, graduating startups officially open their fundraising round by pitching their company to an audience of 250 angel investors, strategic ventures and venture capitalists.

Sundaram said the Internet of Things is primed for exponential growth through the next five years. The Internet of Things is the rapidly increasing collection of non-PC physical devices connecting to the Internet. Examples of Internet of Things devices include sensors to monitor power grids, assembly lines, agriculture and even home appliances like thermostats. As more of these devices come online, the risks of potential software defects and cyber-hacking exploits are of paramount interest to industry.

"According to Cisco Systems, an international technology company, IoT will generate a value of $14 trillion over the next decade, with more than 50 billion devices connected to the Internet by 2020," he said. "Identifying and fixing operational issues in a network of connected devices deployed remotely is a major pain point for IoT device manufacturers and operators. In fact, the industry spent more than $1 billion to fix operational issues in 2013, and this is growing at a 21 percent compound annual growth rate."

Sundaram said SensorHound has developed "vertical-agnostic operations monitoring solutions" for Internet of Things devices.

"Our software constantly monitors these small but critical devices to proactively detect threats and automatically send alerts with detailed diagnostic data to IoT device manufacturers and operators. It continuously tracks the health of deployed IoT devices and achieves a level of visibility previously possible only in a laboratory setting at an unbelievably tiny footprint," he said. "Tracking the health of IoT edge devices continuously allows early detection and quick resolution of operational bugs and threats, thus significantly reducing their impact both in terms of physical damage and costs."

Sundaram said current solutions to address operational issues have several limitations.

"Most solutions are reactive and manual, as they collect only basic metrics from IoT devices. Moreover, these solutions depend on domain knowledge and so are specific to individual applications," he said. "Our machine learning algorithms automatically and proactively detect anomalous behaviors that indicate security intrusions and software malfunctions including previously unknown ones. Our solutions are vertical-agnostic, which means they are applicable to all IoT applications, and can be easily integrated with any device with reprogramming capabilities."

SensorHound was founded in 2013 by Sundaram and Matthew Tan Creti, then-Ph.D. candidates in Purdue University's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Patrick Eugster, associate professor in Purdue's Department of Computer Science. The company's solutions stem from research they conducted.

"The motivation for our research came from personal experience in trying to build networked embedded systems. We expected information to come in from the sensors, but when data didn't arrive, we realized a diagnosis tool was needed for people who develop these systems," Sundaram said.

SensorHound is headquartered in the Purdue Research Park of West Lafayette. The company received seed funding from the National Science Foundation SBIR Phase I program, Elevate Ventures, Purdue Research Foundation's Emerging Innovations Fund, Alchemist Accelerator and angel investors who also serve as advisers. The company currently is in advanced discussions with three Fortune 500 companies.

A video about SensorHound is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HivLOiCJ7JE

About SensorHound Inc.

SensorHound's mission is to improve the security and reliability of the Internet of Things (IoT). Our suite of software products provides industry's first IoT-specific operations monitoring software that is proactive, automated and vertical-agnostic. Our breakthrough solution, based on award-winning technology developed over 10 years by leading IoT researchers, can significantly reduce the operational and maintenance costs of IoT deployments. 

Source: Vinai Sundaram, 408-560-2962, vinai@sensorhound.com

Purdue Research Park contact: Steve Martin, 765-588-3342, sgmartin@prf.org 

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