David Schropfer came up with the idea for SAFE when he was making his young daughter”™s very first password.
“I just put the number one next to it ”” like this is her first password,” Schropfer said. “And in five years she’ll have 50 or 100 passwords perhaps. But the reality is passwords don’t protect anybody from anything. So that created the genesis for SAFE.”
SAFE, short for Smartphone Access for Everyone, is an authentication and meeting management system designed to replace passwords, similar to sign-in features from Google and Facebook that allow users to sign into new websites using their existing accounts with those companies.
“The SAFE authenticator is a product that works exactly like Sign In with Facebook or Sign In with Google with two major differences,” Schropfer, who is based in Kingston, said. “One, we do not use passwords — the push notification to your phone basically serves the role of the password itself. So you can log into things without passwords for any website that puts the SAFE button up there.
“Google authenticator and SAFE authenticator basically work the same way,” he continued, “except we have no passwords, and of course, Facebook and Google are on one end of the spectrum when it comes to privacy and we are on the opposite end of that spectrum.
“They will give all the data they have about you,” he declared. “We will give none of the data we have about you.”
Schropfer”™s expertise in digital technology and products comes from his years working in telecommunications, cloud computing, digital payments and cybersecurity, among others. Twenty years ago, he was CEO and chairman of Softzoo, one of the world”™s first cloud computing companies, followed by held management positions at IDT Telecom and Waldron Holdings.
When he got the idea for SAFE some seven years ago, he was head of mobile commerce at the Luciano Group, a division he had created.
“Of course, security is at the forefront of mobile payments and mobile commerce, so I got very well acquainted with what a smartphone can do from a security standpoint,” he said.
Once the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Schropfer and his team realized that the format of SAFE ”” in which a push notification can be sent to a smartphone or email to replace a password ”” was perfect for securely sending invitations to a Zoom meeting, while keeping out unauthorized visitors.
Schropfer decided that narrowing the focus to one sector, higher education environments, that would put SAFE”™s qualities to best use. The SAFE OnTime Meeting Manager component allows educators to cut down time spent on necessary administrative tasks, making access to hybrid and remote courses easier by allowing students to call into class via a notification on their phone.
That call can be answered from anywhere, and used for automatic attendance-taking.
“The product as it exists now solves the problem of hybrid learning, solves the problem of all the administrative and attendance time that it takes to start a class where you have some students that are joining via Zoom or other web conference and other students that are sitting right in front of the professor,” Schropfer said. “We let all of that happen with one click and we take attendance automatically in about 30 seconds.”
Those details of the product, Schropfer said, came from testing and learning from real-world implementation and feedback on the project, particularly with Chris Algozzine, a senior professional lecturer of computer science at Marist College.
SAFE was piloted for the first time at Marist in Algozzine”™s technology entrepreneurship course last year, where Schropfer was also a guest speaker.
“David used his opportunity as my guest to speak with my students to also perform a demonstration ”” a test of the Beta version of his product,” Algozzine said. “The students were excited to have the experience and provide feedback on a real product to a real entrepreneur in the classroom.
“I was able to see the benefit of his application immediately,” he continued, “with push notifications sent to the smartphones in the hands of my students, they could easily join the now much more secure Zoom call ”” no more links to send. They were able to respond in the classroom that they were already present for class.
“On my end,” he added, “I was able to start teaching while viewing an easy-to-read SAFE dashboard on a background screen I could easily refer to at any time between lecturing and sharing my lesson for the day.”
Algozzine praised the SAFE technology for the way it helps educators start teaching on time every class; he also helped integrate the technology into Marist”™s learning management systems for the pilot program that is currently underway for a subset of the school.
In addition to Marist, SAFE is running the same pilot program at Boston College, Schropfer”™s alma mater, and the University of the Bahamas, at all of which the company is providing grants for students to carry out pilot integrations and run tests on the product, as suggested by Algozzine.
“(It”™s) a win for SAFE, a win for the institution as it receives collaborative grant money from industry, and a win for students who get paid to do creative work and build up their resumes while practicing the skills they’re learning at college,” Algozzine said.
When SAFE officially launches, it will be available for about $1.29 a month for one faculty seat and 11 student seats, a cost the educational institution would absorb.
That revenue means that SAFE doesn”™t have to sell user data to stay afloat like many tech companies — something Schropfer is passionate about avoiding.
“We do not ever sell personal data or personal activity of any kind,” he said. “So whatever happens on our platform stays on our platform. We think that’s the way the world is going, so we’re trying to get ahead of the curve by being absolutely privacy-centric.”
SAFE collects as little private information as possible ”” just an email address and phone number are needed for the product to function ”” and the information about who is attending a class and who is absent is solely for the professor”™s use in keeping attendance records.
For signing into websites that require an email address, users have the option to use a proxy email address so they don”™t have to give their actual address, and then can turn off emails from that source if they wish.
Schropfer said that, if current progress is maintained, “We’re going to end up giving complete control to an end user, or to any person who uses the product over their information. They can share their email or not. They can turn the ability for somebody to send them email on and off. They can turn on and off the ability for a company to send a push notification to their phone.
“SAFE On-Time Meeting Manager is really the beginning of a product that will put privacy back into the hands of every consumer,” he declared.
