ABOUT: Zerify Inc. (OTCQB: ZRFY), formerly StrikeForce Technologies, is an Edison, New Jersey-based company with over two decades of experience in cybersecurity solutions. The company helps to prevent cyber theft and data security breaches for consumers, corporations and government agencies through powerful multi-factor “out-of-band” authentication and keystroke encryption along with mobile solutions. Zerify offers a video conferencing solution that uses no desktop and is entirely web-based, offering a five-level meeting security control approach designed to protect valuable information.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTS:
WSA: Good day from Wall Street, this is Juan Costello, Senior Analyst with the Wall Street Analyzer. Joining us today is Mark Kay, CEO and Chairman at Zerify Incorporated. The company trades on the OTCQB, Ticker Symbol is ZRFY. Thanks for joining us today there, Mark.
Mark Kay: Thank you very much, Juan. Pleasure to be on.
WSA: Yeah. So it’s been a while since we had you on the program. So for some of our listeners that are new to the story and know you better by your former name, Strikeforce, can you give us an overview there and intro of the company?
Mark Kay: Sure, Juan. Well, first of all, we changed our name from Strikeforce Technology Inc. to Zerify Inc. And it wasn’t a quick thing, trust me, we decided to change it last September over a year ago actually, because we felt that we’re changing our strategy and direction. We built a new product and we now call it Zerify Meet, and it is a secure video conferencing program. In doing that, we put all of our tools that we had built as a cybersecurity company into the conferencing program and therefore that’s how we lead all of our sales. So therefore, we have a very secure video conferencing platform. It works very, very well and it now has all these new products involved in it and various new features we’ll be adding towards the near future. It took us that long, because we did hire a great company, Dark Roast actually who is very good at renaming companies. And we wanted a short name that’s quick to say, easy to understand and definitely a strong name that works well.
And so far it’s worked very, very well and we’re still not 100% done, but we’re almost done. So Zerify Meet is our video conferencing product now and Zerify Defender is our desktop conference — desktop video tool that actually — that works very strongly with Zerify Meet and adds tons of security to it. Besides Zerify Meet has its own authentication platform, which is our old Protect ID that we used to be selling and we still do, so it’s very, very strong. It has three programs versus one. All the other Zoom, WebEx, Teams, they’re all just one major program for video conferencing. We have that. That’s called Zerify Meet. But we also have our Protect ID, which is our authentication piece and we have Zerify Defender, which is the largest security piece that secures many other parts of the computer for all your applications, which we could talk about a little later.
WSA: Yeah, certainly. So can you bring us up to speed there on some of the most recent news, including the Vation Ventures’ partnership?
Mark Kay: Right, that’s a great partnership. We just signed them last month in October. They definitely have many great clients. They work with actually Cisco, they work with Zoom, many other major clients. So we highlight them in our presentation that I will definitely be sending and they are a great company. They had worked with worldwide companies as well. They would guarantee to bring in these three to five strategic vendors that we will be able to work with and 15 to 25 resellers all within a year. Matter of fact, we’ve been with them only a month and they already have a lot of excitement from their resellers. And especially on Zerify Defender, which is a great product that works very, very well on your PC and it does a great job in securing your camera, your audio and many other parts of your computer that adds to any product you bring in.
Matter of fact, if you are doing with Zoom and WebEx and Teams and we’re looking to become resellers of their products as well, you add a lot of security to that product, because it secures those parts of your computer, your personal computer on any and every application you ever run against and that’s hacked tremendously. Most of all the hacking is done through cameras and you don’t even know what’s happening. And we definitely are the only product out there that adds that security to all programs running on your computer.
WSA: Right, yeah. So what are the key trends that you’re seeing right now in the sector and what do you feel makes Zerify uniquely positioned with your product offerings to be able to capitalize?
Mark Kay: And that’s a great question as well. We’ve got into video conferencing actually way before the pandemic even came to be. Obviously with the pandemic here, more and more video conferencing is now occurring. Everybody always really talks to people and wants to see them and most people are not working in the offices. Companies are starting to require people to be in the office, but only about three days a week typically, so they still have to do video conferencing. Matter of fact, we’re in the office three days a week as well. And the video conferencing tool we have we use even when we’re in the office, because you get so used to it and you get so used to using it and then everybody works in their own PC even in the same room, which is ironic, but it’s true. But video conferencing isn’t just video conferencing, right? It’s seeing and hearing people you’re talking to and on every phone, every device you’re doing.
Keep in mind, all the devices work on our video conferencing tool and probably on most video conferencing tools. You can use an Android or an iOS device at the same time. But in the future, keep in mind the science fiction movies you’ve seen, because I’m sure you’ve all seen some, I’ve seen a lot of the science fiction. I attend the meetings and conferences they have. But if you look up, they all deal with seeing things in the sky in front of you, right? You can visualize things. You can see things. They come up in front of your face, but they’re all videos. They’re all videos, whether it’s through the air or not, it doesn’t matter. They’re all various videos and that’s going to be our future. So video conferencing isn’t just for now and growing rapidly, it’s actually going to be a huge concept in the future. It’s growing tremendously right now with over 130 million people using it. It’s got a lot of value in it as well and definitely a great way that move a cybersecurity company forward.
Matter of fact, we’ve been highlighted by Forrester as one of the top 25 worldwide secure companies out there with a product. They’re not even picking on Zerify Meet, but that’s what they’re talking about really, that we are in the top 25 worldwide secure companies, not even just cyber security company, which we’re the only one in it. And we’re the only one with a video conferencing product in their top 25 secure comp communication company. So we feel very good about that and it helps definitely show that we are very secure. You cannot have anybody on your product get in without being authenticated, but we are adding a new feature. And let me talk a little bit about the new features we’re adding. One of the new features we will be adding in the next couple of weeks is public, private. So in other words, all of your meetings today have been considered private.
We will now consider a public meeting, which we’ve been asked by some of our users as well that they want to be able to have a meeting where they can invite hundreds and hundreds of different people and not make it authenticate it at all because people sometimes get nervous over that and we’re saying, fine, as long as you realize you will be hacked during that time period. But they want to do that. They want to be able to let anybody and everybody to sign in. So we gave them the opportunity to have a public meeting, which would be a great new feature in our business. Matter of fact, we also added phone calls. So if somebody wants to call in to a meeting but not have any video whatsoever with them, which I’m not sure how they could do that, but let’s say they don’t, we do add, we add that number.
And we are the only ones out there that add a phone number that actually is authenticated. Imagine having a phone call made and authenticating that phone call, and you won’t know its being authenticated. You might be asked to do something about it, but pretty much you will not know what’s being authenticated. So we will have the authentication call being added within a couple weeks as well in the same feature. And more importantly, we’ll be adding — we’ve added breakout rooms. So now breakout rooms is part of our product. Our video conferencing product now provides breakout rooms. We’ll be putting out instructions and explaining to people how to use them. They’re actually — breakout rooms is actually in our production version now, but we’ll be explaining it further in the future.
And it’s a great opportunity because then we will be a serious player in education, in the court systems, in the government, in healthcare. We’re going to go back to healthcare now with breakout rooms and we feel we have a great opportunity there if they want to be extremely confidential and extremely secure. So these are all new features that will be coming out in the next couple of weeks in a world that’s focusing much more on video conferencing, but maybe they won’t call that in the future. Maybe we’ll just be, I got to talk to so and so. But they’ll be doing it through video conferencing capabilities and that’s what we’ll be doing in the near future.
WSA: I’m sure that has tremendous applications not only with companies even like ours that do shareholder meetings and things like that, but education and other sectors that can really use that product and rely on having that security.
Mark Kay: Absolutely.
WSA: So last time we had talked about APIs. Can you give us an update on that?
Mark Kay: Yeah, that’s a great question and I appreciate you bringing it up. We also have a strong API with Zerify Meet that it allows a company. Matter of fact, I’ll talk about Push Force, because they are a contract we already signed almost a year ago and fortunately they’re now ready to go live. It just took them a very long time through the pandemic to hire some of the right people to do their technology, which we’re very happy for now. And they expect to be live definitely by February of next year and they’re still looking at some of the major clients they were bringing in. And keep in mind, they are a retail management company, right? So they sell for boat companies, car companies, companies that are selling products per se.
And in terms of the way they would be providing them capability to sell it is they would get a video conference, a video of what they’re selling and how it works automatically through their applications. So the API would be written within their application itself. They’d be able to bring up Zerify Meet whenever they need to or want to. And it’ll be part of them selling it and they feel it’d be a great new tool for the industry let alone for themselves. And we will be offering and we are offering that tool to the industry as well. So we feel that’s a great opportunity for them and a great opportunity for us especially to get them on as a client.
WSA: So what are the key goals and milestones that you’re hoping to accomplish from now through the first half of 2023?
Mark Kay: Well, of course, we’d love to be a multimillion dollar company, but that ain’t going to happen so fast. But that should happen in the future. We see it happening soon with the Push Force finally getting done. We do have another major client that’s supposedly coming on board. They will be selling a lot of Zerify Defender, which we feel and many of them feel and even Vation Ventures feel that’s the best product in the marketplace today and with no competition. And that is the product that controls and secures your camera, your audio. Definitely, a lot of things cannot occur on your computer without it letting you know that’s happening and asking you for your permission. So it will allow it if you give it permission, but otherwise it won’t. And that’s you’d be amazed how many things are actually trying to get your camera. You’d be amazed how many times Yahoo wants to turn on your camera. Right now it does, because you’re not aware of it.
But with this product, you will not have to give them permission to do it and you will be aware of it. We feel it’s a great product plus it’ll work with any application that runs on your computer, anything. So if you’re running Zoom, you’re running WebEx, you’re running Teams, they’re not secure products. They add security to it, but they’re not really secure products, they don’t do an authentication for you. But this gives — does look at the camera, it does control the camera, control your audio, control other pieces of your computer that makes it much more secure and makes it much better the product than it is today. So we’ll actually be a reseller for Zoom and WebEx and Teams. We expect to be anyway in the near future as we fill out the forms and join the reseller market from that perspective because the product will be very strong and we’ll be selling it to resellers that Vation Ventures gives us that actually does sell to people who buy those products.
So we feel very strong about the capability, about the future. We have another client that’s coming on board again that will potentially be a great buyer and reseller for us that’s not from Vation Ventures that will almost get us to $1 million alone. So we feel very strong about that. That’ll happen next year. So we’re feeling good. We’re searching out other clients like that other communication capabilities like that and see a future that we can actually be proud of.
Mark Kay: Yeah, well, those cyber threats are only going to get worse and worse and the security is just going to have to be even tighter and tighter with that approaching.
WSA: Right. And keep in mind, people who don’t want security are afraid of security. We now offer that feature as well. So that’ll be, I think a very, very helpful point to many people who feel security adds a lot of issues and questions to them. So fine, buy it. Use the public side of it and you can do whatever you want and you’ll be hacked. I guarantee it pretty much. And you will be hacked, but you want to be hacked, that’s your business. And we will be stating that when you say yes, you want a public meeting.
Mark Kay: Right. And so perhaps you can talk about your background and experience Mark, who the key management team is there, and what’s your skin in the game.
WSA: Sure, Juan. Well, actually I joined this company — I was asked to join the company by George Waller and Ram Pemmaraju who were co-founders of Zerify. I used to work at JP Morgan as most of you probably know and I’ve worked there for 26 years. Then I was going to do nothing at that some point and they talked me into joining them because Ram is a very, very bright, very bright technician still here, still the CTO. He is a patent holder for all of our patents that the company now owns of course and strong and showing some great promise. Matter of fact, we did “out-of-band” authentication before it was even a concept in the marketplace. And yes, we do have the original patents for it. And yes, we did sue Microsoft and we won that deal as well.
But at this point, we’re using it for good causes such as this video conference call as well. It has “out-of-band” authentication capabilities of using it if you care to. And by the way, it also has other capabilities of doing fingerprint and facial recognition if you really want to be a strong authentication. But anyway, that’s where I come from many years of JP Morgan as well. And Ram comes from many years at Bell Labs and Bell Core. He worked there for years and he was always a research guy and always is researching. Even now, continuously comes up with some new thoughts and products. And mostly, I say no to, but sometimes they’re great. And George Waller is our third partner as well and he is very, very strong at marketing, very good salesperson and is looking up many different concepts. He has bought in Vation Ventures for us and we’re seeing a great promise on resellers, because we have to be selling to resellers. We can’t keep selling to individuals. It’ll take us forever.
Yes, people are buying it constantly, but at $15 a month approximately, we’re not going to make that much money. So we have to get some major companies in here and we feel Vation Ventures is helping us getting the resales and attributors that’ll help us get some major clients. And they’re already showing great interest, especially again in Zerify Defender.
WSA: Yeah, I’ve gone through your platform before and it has many of the same features of like Zoom and WebEx, things like that with the enhanced security in addition, so the user is not really missing out on any sort of features.
Mark Kay: Yeah.
WSA: So in terms of investors and the financial community, what do you wish they better understood about the company that would result in a higher valuation on the stock.
Mark Kay: Well, that’s a great question. Great point. And right now our stock is not in a great place right now. It’s below a penny. It’s hanging in there, but it’s still below a penny. And we feel we would need to give it way above a penny and we’re working on that. We’re working with many different companies. We’re doing tons of marketing. As a matter of fact, we just really pushed hard on the marketing and advertising and we got to get people more interested in Zerify. We got to get people more interested in products as well. We’re selling a lot, but we need these major companies. We feel these deals in front of us will show well how much we’re — how hard we’re pushing it, how much we’re trying to get on board and how great the products are. And they really do secure you and provide great capability. And the big price probably a little less than Zoom and WebEx and I’m sorry and Meet and we feel they’re going to be great products in the future.
And we feel we’re trying many new things now that we didn’t do before and we’re focusing much more on distributors and resellers, less on our sales people who really are being successful, but not that successful. And again, we can get all the individuals we need to be our clients, but it still won’t get us too far. So that’s why we’re focusing much more on the companies and much more through our new resale distributors that we’re looking to bring in and starting to show some progress in that area.
WSA: Once again, we’re speaking with, Mark Kay, CEO and Chairman at Zerify Incorporated, which trades on the OTCQB, Ticker symbol is ZRFY. Market cap is about $7 million. So before we conclude here Mark, why do you believe investors should consider the company as a good investment opportunity at this point today?
Mark Kay: Well, and I can’t urge anybody to necessarily buy our stock per se, because that would be illegal. But our stock is a great buy at this point I believe. We are at a point where we are starting to get some major sales. We’re getting some new contracts. Yes, they will be effective next year. We have one that might be effective before the end of this year. They’re going to be some large contracts with some large companies that we feel is going to move the stock. Based on that and we feel very strong about the capabilities and these new features and our new products will give us the opportunity to get to the education courts and healthcare area again and get them on board now that we have breakout rooms. So we feel pretty strong about where we are, where we’re going and still believe we have a great year ahead of us. Especially with that one client, we expect to get on board, that’ll get us close to $1 million next year only if we do get them of course. But we think we will. All right. Thank you very much. I appreciate it and thank you all for listening.
WSA: Yeah. We certainly look forward to continuing to track the company’s growth and report on the upcoming progress. And it was good having you back on for an update on Zerify.
Mark Kay: All right. Thank you very much, Juan.
