Zighra

Zighra is an Ottawa-based security company that develops what it describes as a behavioural AI operating system for cyber and electronic defence. The platform fuses multi-domain signals — including radio-frequency activity, GNSS/GPS interference, network traffic, and behavioural and device telemetry — to produce real-time situational awareness, autonomous threat detection and explainable decision support. Its stated workflow is structured around three stages: understanding the environment through sensor fusion, deciding through domain-informed and explainable AI models that describe what an anomaly is and how it deviates from normal behaviour, and acting through autonomous or operator-guided response, integrated alerts and automated decision support.

A second product line addresses identity. Marketed under the SilentEdge/Continuous MFA banner, it applies behavioural biometrics — typing, swiping, tapping, device-holding patterns — together with sensor analytics and contextual/environmental signals to build a per-user behavioural model, supporting continuous authentication, passwordless access, proof of presence, user-device fingerprinting, transaction and session risk assessment, and task-based challenges intended to distinguish humans from bots. The company states this technology is FIDO Certified and can learn entirely on-device. Earlier company material describes the same core technology under the name KineticID, a plug-in for mobile applications that implicitly recognises device and user from habits and interaction patterns in order to detect account-takeover fraud and automated attacks in mobile transactions.

Zighra positions its models as running directly on endpoints and sensors, enabling low-latency, privacy-preserving inference without reliance on cloud connectivity, and frames its approach as "third wave" AI inspired by biological intelligence, combining generative behavioural models, multi-sensor fusion and Explainable AI (XAI). It also offers command-and-control functions, including a common operating picture across distributed environments and the ability to remotely lock or shut down sessions and assets.

Founding story

According to an interview with the company, Zighra's founders were security scientists frustrated by repeatedly entering PINs and passwords on their phones and apps, a friction that leads many smartphone users to disable screen locks and stay permanently logged in. Founder Deepak Dutt proposed training phones and apps to recognise a user implicitly from habits and interaction patterns — how the phone is held, the angle of holding, hand and finger size, touch-screen pressure and other device sensor data — forming what the company called a unique "Kinetic signature," designed to be embedded into existing mobile apps without user effort. The name Zighra is described as a Sanskrit word meaning speed, acceleration, velocity or quickness, reflecting the goal of accelerating transactions with frictionless mobile authentication and fraud prevention. Dutt served as CEO/CTO with prior roles at NeST Technologies, Intsyx, InLearning Labs, Nortel, Siemens and Newbridge Networks and a master's in computer science from the University of Ottawa; Deepti Menon was COO, with a telecom R&D background at Nortel and a master's in computer science from the University of Ottawa.

Business model

Zighra licenses its AI security platform to organizations, with a sales motion centred on demo requests from its website. It describes its technology as dual-use, serving both defence and commercial sectors, and its identity products are delivered as software that plugs into mobile applications and runs machine-learning models locally on devices and sensors.

Traction

Company materials cite pilots with the Canadian Coast Guard and work with the Royal Canadian Navy, pre-qualification under ISED's Pathway to Commercialization, and testing through ISC Innovation Programs. A 2014 interview reported over $80M in financial transactions secured, $1M raised in non-dilutive funds, and an IBM relationship for the enterprise market, along with selection as one of Canada's top three globalizers, TiE50 finalist status in Silicon Valley and top Canadian startup at the Canada-Brasil 3.0 conference. A 2009-founded profile listed the company at full-product-ready stage with 7 employees.

Latest developments

The company's current website positions Zighra as an AI operating system for cyber and electronic defence, emphasizing multi-sensor fusion across RF and GNSS signals, explainable AI for decision support, on-device autonomous response, and dual-use applicability across defence and commercial sectors.