Meet Janine Darling: the tech entrepreneur disrupting cyber-security

Janine Darling is one of the five winners of the joint AXA-Global Invest Her (GIH) Mentoring competition, dedicated to promoting women entrepreneurship. Discover her story.

2 minutes

Janine’s obsession with data inspired the idea behind her startup STASH: the solution to data vulnerability & exploitation. She devised her technology as a digital solution that can consolidate a myriad of her own online and offline data while including security.

As an IT professional, she spent the beginning of her career managing data and detecting security breaches for her clients. When this young entrepreneur decided to stand on her own two feet, she first reached out to focus groups to test her theories and, yes: people were interested in a genuine security solution for their data.

A bullet proof vest for your data

As Janine so rightly phrases it, Data breach is no longer a question of if, but a question of when. There are millions of hacks and security breaches every year. In fact, there have been approximately 185 million confirmed intrusions to date that have by-passed network, server, endpoint, and application security tools. No data is safe. STASH stores all of your personal information in multiples and provides data resiliency for decades. Whether now, or in a hundred years, when cybercriminals or sophisticated algorithms get your data, all they will find is STASH’s DigitalConfetti™.

Many would find vast the task of creating their own startup, but not Janine Darling. Always up for a challenge, Janine quit the comfort of the corporate world to start her own venture. As she often says, she is not afraid of failure. This young woman sees all setbacks as opportunities to bounce back, stronger than ever. As a woman in a male dominated industry, she has learned to work and succeed in an alienating environment. But as she likes to remind her peers, women entrepreneurs, especially in technology, in general fare much better than their male counterparts: they gain a 35% higher return on investment[1], women-led companies perform 3 times better than the S&P500 and when they receive funding[2], they see a 12% increase in revenue[3].

Women in tech: a force to be reckoned with

Janine is an advocate for women. She emphasizes that they are at the forefront of entrepreneurship and innovation and states that it is time to recognize them as forces to be reckoned with in the tech world especially. It is his same spirit that lead her to apply to the AXA-GIH Mentoring program. In this initiative, Janine saw a platform for women entrepreneurs to showcase their talent. As she stated: ‘I applied to [the AXA-GIH Program] because it appeared to be thoughtfully derived, professionally progressive and deeply aware of the genuine need for resources and support for women founded companies’. Not only did the program help Janine connect with fellow women entrepreneurs from around the world, she was also able to make decisive business connections.

Today, Janine she advises her fellow women entrepreneurs to have the same attitude towards running a business., Janine Darling lives by 7 cardinal rules: do your homework, be prepared for both success and failure, ask for help, don’t be afraid to pivot, set up your business to succeed and most importantly, don’t give up.