S7 Bonus: From Fractional CTO to Seed-Backed Cybersecurity Founder: Implementing Practical Searchable Encryption with Dan Draper of CipherStash

Dan Draper is from South Australia, specifically Adelaide, but his family now lives in Sydney. Interestingly, he does not drink Fosters beer (which is not surprising), and doesn't know what a blooming' onion is. Outside of tech, he has been a life long martial artist, and continues to compete in several forms today. He finds that there is overlap between coding and martial arts, as they are very technical, require a lot of solo focus, and... jokingly, you have to be ready to take a beating.

Five years ago, Dan got the idea of his current venture while he was the CTO at Expert360. During his time there, he was approached by his clients as they demanded proof of how his organization was protecting their data. He was never fully satisfied with the answers they gave the clients. He desired bridge the worlds between encrypted data, and queryable information.

This is the creation story of CipherStash.