Radialpoint

Radialpoint (formerly known as Zero-Knowledge Systems, Inc.) is a privately held Montreal-based company founded in 1997 by Austin, Hamnett and Hammie Hill. The company was founded to provide strong privacy services to individuals. Its flagship product, the Freedom Network, received a lot of publicity.

Besides the Freedom Network, the company also developed electronic cash systems, enterprise data privacy systems, location based wireless privacy systems. At its peak the company was reported to have more than 220 employees.Fact|date=July 2007 The company raised $55 million dollars in between 1997 and 2001.Fact|date=July 2007 During the dot-com bust, the company dismissed many of its staff and shut down many lines of privacy research and business. The company was criticized in the press as an example of a Dot.Com failure as it shut down business units.Fact|date=July 2007 (The Freedom Network was shut down in 2002, and despite a source code release hosted by The Shmoo Group, the software became obsolete. However, the Tor network benefited from design advice and lessons learned by Zero-Knowledge.)

Nonetheless, the company weathered the bust. It began to license security services to Internet Service Providers in 2002. The company changed its name to Radialpoint in 2005.

Today, with Hamnett Hill as CEO, the company is a provider of managed consumer Internet services. Radialpoint focuses exclusively on the needs of Broadband Service Providers (BSPs) who want to offer value added services for broadband subscribers.

Prominent employees included Adam Back, Stefan Brands, Mario Contestabile, Ian Goldberg, Tom Maddox, Mike Shaver and Adam Shostack.

In June 2006, Austin Hill the co-founder of the company left to work on a new startup named [http://akoha.org Akoha] with Alex Eberts, the first employee of Zero-Knowledge.

In February, 2008, Stefan Brands’ company Credentica was purchased by Microsoft. Much of Credentica’s technology benefitted from work done at Zero-Knowledge Systems.

External references

* [http://www.radialpoint.com Corporate website]
* [http://www.akoha.org Austin Hill's new project, Akoha]
* [http://securitymario.spaces.live.com/ Mario's blog]
* [http://www.cypherspace.org/adam/ Adam Back]
* [http://www.emergentchaos.com/ Adam Shostack's blog]
* [http://www.favvas.com/ George Favvas' blog]
* [http://www.billionswithzeroknowledge.com Austin Hill's blog]