Episode 130: Liz Allan, Glenn Melford-Colegate and Katherine Priestley - Managing Cyber Threats and Connectivity with Enigma Net

Episode 130: Liz Allan, Glenn Melford-Colegate and Katherine Priestley - Managing Cyber Threats and Connectivity with Enigma Net.

Liz Allan is joined by Katherine Priestley (CEO) and Glenn Melford-Colegate (Founder & Co-CTO) of Enigma Net, a company on a mission to fix the fundamental issues with the Internet. They break down the hidden inefficiencies of Internet connectivity, why your broadband provider might not be giving you the service you think you’re paying for, and how their Accelerated Private Network (APN) technology is revolutionising connectivity. Glenn and Katherine explain why EV charge point operators (CPOs) are struggling with payment failures, back-office issues, and connectivity dropouts and how Enigma Net’s solution can stabilise, secure, and speed up data transmission, ensuring a seamless and more reliable EV charging experience.

Katherine Priestley Bio:

Katherine Priestley has a 30-year background in finance and investing, focusing on technology companies ranging from biotechnology to cybersecurity. She takes a problem-first approach, asking, "What issue are we trying to solve?" before identifying the best tech minds to build solutions. After recognising Glenn’s unique ability to tackle complex technological challenges, she joined Enigma Net to help revolutionise Internet reliability, security, and efficiency for businesses and infrastructure.

Glenn Melford-Colegate Bio:

Glenn started his electronics and CAD design career, moving into touchscreen technology in the late 1990s. He played a key role in designing the first touchscreen kiosks for Argos. Having witnessed businesses collapse due to poor Internet reliability, Glenn founded Enigma Net to fix the Internet and create a secure, high-speed, and efficient data transmission system. 

Quote of the Episode:

"You don’t have to accept what you’re given—make a change, make yourself more efficient." – Glenn Melford-Colegate.

Links:
Website https://enigmanet.ai/
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in

Transcript

Liz Allan [00:00:01]:
On today's podcast, I’m delighted to have a lovely couple of guests with me who will undoubtedly blow your mind in a wonderful way. I have Katherine Priestley and Glenn Melford Colgate, both from Enigma Net. Catherine and Glenn, thank you ever so much for joining me; it’s wonderful to see you.

Katherine Priestly [00:00:20]:
Thanks for having us on, Liz.

Liz Allan [00:00:22]:
So it's funny because I don't often have a couple of people join me, so it's quite nice. I feel quite cosy with you both. But we've spoken a few times, haven't we, about your products and Enigma Net? So I'm just gonna start by saying that Katherine is the CEO, and Glenn is the founder and the co-CTO

Liz Allan [00:00:43]:
Can you start with, and I'm gonna go to you first, Glenn. I always ask this at the beginning of the podcast. Give me a little bit of your background and what brought you to forming Enigma Net.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:00:58]:
Well, so I started in 1997 working for a company in South Wales called High-tech Assemblies. I was meant to be going into the RAF. But it turns out I was long sighted in one. I am short sighted in the other.

Liz Allan [00:01:11]:
Oh, no.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:01:13]:
 My boss at the time, because I worked there part time, he said, well, you know, you're too bright to go and just work on an assembly line. So do you wanna take an apprenticeship here? He says, you know, pay is terrible. You're gonna get treated like dirt, he says, but I'm sure you'll get something out of it. So I started my apprenticeship. And, sure enough, you know, got introduced into CAD Design, got to work on the line, you know, building the machines, the wire harnesses, and everything else like that. And I basically got my break when we started to look at touchscreen technology.

Liz Allan [00:01:48]:
Okay.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:01:48]:
So in 1998, a company out in Holland wanted to do an Internet cafe, but they wanted it all touchscreen. So I designed the 1st touchscreen terminal that went out into the market.

Liz Allan [00:01:58]:
Oh, wow.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:02:01]:
And then beyond there, I started to get involved with, self-service kiosks. So I did the first ones that went into Argos, for example.

Liz Allan [00:02:10]:
Oh my god. Okay.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:02:12]:
I consulted with NCR and IBM on the self-service kiosks that you see in Tesco and things like that. But also kept an eye on sort of the amusement stuff that I'd done previously. So I still did a lot with casinos and worked with companies in America as well that were doing off track sports betting. And that's when I really became aware of, the issues with the Internet at that point because we were doing, you know, chip and pin field, chip and pin that was basically called unattended. So this meant that, we weren't in control of the device. We don't have anybody on hand who can just go and reset it. Mhmm. And we quickly became aware of all the problems, you know, with streaming services and everything else like that.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:02:56]:
That company struggled because of this, you know, on-call out charges and everything else. So, essentially, that company died a death because of the Internet. Oh, god. At that point, there were several other technologies that I was looking at doing, but I knew, ultimately, that if I had to get those technologies working, I had to find a way to fix the Internet. So that was why I founded Enigma and met went out with Catherine.

Liz Allan [00:03:21]:
My goodness. Katherine, so, please give me some of your background and why you joined Glenn.

Katherine Priestly [00:03:28]:
Yeah. Oh, well, thank you, Liz. So I'm, I have a background in finance and investing, and, I have been investing in technology companies for, I guess, 30 years now. I used to say 20 years, but it's been so long saying 20 years. It must be 30 years by now. And, you know, a whole range of technologies from biotechnology all the way through to cybersecurity. But, you know, always looking, starting with the question, you know, what's the problem that we're trying to solve here? And how big is that problem? How easy is it to access solutions? That's the sort of the starting place. And then the second place is, you know, who are the creative people behind the solutions? Who are the tech people? And just how good are they? And that part's the harder part, as you can imagine.

Katherine Priestly [00:04:21]:
So when Glenn came to me with, you know, the problem is solving the Internet, that's a very big problem with a lot of applications. Just spending a little bit of time with Glenn, I realised that he's very unusual and that his technical competency covers quite a wide dimension of areas. You know, often you find a super tech person very singularly focused, and you have to string a few of these people together and work in collaboration. It's amazing how far Glenn's brain stretches both across a wide spectrum but also deeply. And you can really start to tackle some very interesting problems when you work with the polymath. So it was a pleasure to join with Glenn and start to build Enigma net.

Liz Allan [00:05:11]:
So I was just gonna start, and I told you I would say this before when we were talking beforehand. Excuse me. I see myself as quite a geeky person. I'm pretty I quite I like tech. I think I'm a bit of a geek, but I think what we need to do today is to break down what you do into simple terms. And so much so that because we talked before. We had a call before, for quite a while, didn't we? So much so today, I had to ask ChatGPT a question, and I said, what does Enigma Net provide? And I've read this out to you before.

Liz Allan [00:05:49]:
I'm gonna read this out for everybody else. So it says, Enigma Net provides businesses with a specialised Internet service called an accelerated private network or an APN. Think of this as a private secure motorway for your company's data separate from the public Internet. This setup ensures that your data travels quickly and safely, reducing the risk of cyber threats and improving overall performance. Their technology is designed to be easy to install and works with your existing systems, offering a cost-effective solution to common Internet connectivity challenges. Now you said before, didn't you, that it was very simplified. But can you tell me now that I've read that? That is sort of on the right lines, isn't it? Glenn, tell me a bit more about what an accelerated private network is. And why is it important to know about it?

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:06:46]:
Yeah. So if you look at your analogy, for example, I mean, you can you can basically put it in terms of, like, the actual UK's motorway network. Right? If you think of the Internet as the current M6, M25, you know, it's full of potholes, the trips of cars. It's congested. It's, you know, it doesn't have the right on and off points to get people where they are and everything. That is the public Internet.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:07:12]:
Think of what we do more as like the M6 Toll. 

Liz Allan [00:07:16]:
I like that.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:07:17]:
You know, or the Elizabeth line. You know, it's something that literally cuts through and bypasses it, but does it in a very secure way as well. You know? It's kind of like if you had the m 6 toll road and you put a tunnel over the top of it, then your data is what goes through that effectively. But that tunnel is almost impenetrable because of the way we do it.

Liz Allan [00:07:37]:
I like that, oh my goodness. If anybody hasn't got that, we'll keep talking. We'll keep coming back to that, but that is a great analogy, so that is fantastic. So you're talking about the potholes in the Internet. Can you give me some examples of those problems on the Internet, and what does Enigma Net solve with regards to those for businesses?

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:08:04]:
Yeah. So, basically, those potholes are things like so you know the green boxes at the end of your drive?

Liz Allan [00:08:11]:
Yep.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:08:12]:
Probably in the last 10 or 15 years, they've not effectively had any technology updates. The tele

Liz Allan [00:08:17]:
I mean, telephone box. As in the little, what do they call them? Exchanges. Yeah. That's it. Yeah.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:08:22]:
Yeah. So, you know, they're running old outdated technology and the ISPs because they're in a race to the bottom at the moment. They're not upgrading those. Yeah? They could literally do that and give us, you know, 50% more capacity overnight. They have no intention of doing it.

Liz Allan [00:08:37]:
No.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:08:38]:
You know, you've got this mix of copper and fibre in the UK. And anywhere where you have got copper, you have got congestion. Anywhere there's congestion, it impacts even where the fibre is. You know, you've got ISPs lying when they say full fiber. You know, this term was coined, and it means nothing because it means there's fibre somewhere there. But they say full fibre, and you know, people still don't recognise. There's still a little bit of coaxial cable that they get into their router, basically.

Liz Allan [00:09:08]:
Oh, wow.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:09:09]:
You then got things like, obviously, you know, companies because they can't do anything. They're encrypting the data packets. So the packets that are going out on the Internet are getting fatter. That's causing more congestion. There are too many requests, you know, people getting Ring doorbells, the kettle, and the toaster are now getting smart and sending information on the Internet. Yeah.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:09:31]:
So you've got all these extra devices that are just sending data. And then on top of all of that, you've got this thing called net neutrality, where ISPs are not allowed to deprioritize anything. They have to let all the traffic through at whatever speed it wants. So, effectively, all of those things, you know, they cause instability issues, capacity issues, and a whole host of things. Not to mention, as, obviously, Katherine will explain it better than I can because I go very tech, but she can explain the inefficiencies of protocols in a way that sort of people explain. Because I keep on going into, you know, every height of data that goes through that.

Liz Allan [00:10:12]:
Can I just go back a step as well? So you were talking then about copper congestion. So what is it about copper? Because I know that copper's been around a long time and you've opened my eyes to the fact that it's not full fibre at all. But, actually, and I do know a little bit about the little exchange box. I did used to work in telecoms for a little while. But, what is it about copper? What is it, what is this, why does it cause congestion, if I can say it right?

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:10:46]:
So, essentially, the way that copper works is the same as your network cable at home. It's a twisted pair of wires.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:10:55]:
So, effectively, the copper congestion comes when you try to put too much information in because of that twisted pair, the information going one way and the other way bang into each other and remove each other. So that information has to be resent.

Liz Allan [00:11:09]:
Oh my god. Okay.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:11:10]:
There are physical limits to how much you can get down that copper, so when you see them at the data centres now, the copper bundles are like this, but the fibre optic bundles are like that effectively. Ah. But it's a legacy network. It's been there since the start of telecoms, and people are still trying to use it, rather than ripping it up and throwing it away.

Katherine Priestly [00:11:33]:
I think the other aspect, if I may jump in for a moment, Liz is, you know, it's hard to compute to actually visualise the numbers in terms of the dramatic rise in the use of the Internet. You know? So, if you think about the data traffic, whether that's our voice traffic, whether that's videos, whether that's, you know, complex maths and spreadsheets that engineers are sending around the Internet, movie, music, etcetera, the the the data that we're trying to send across these old legacy systems has grown exponentially so not only in quantum, but in complexity as well. And so, there have been decades of underinvestment in the basic infrastructure of the Internet to cope with this exponential growth. And as Glenn says, if you think about net neutrality, it means every time someone's trying to upload a cat video to TikTok, that is competing with, you know, your company's, you know, vital, engineering documents that need to get across to a customer or it's it's competing with government security informations, etcetera, etcetera. So there's a lot of competition for the bandwidth.

Katherine Priestly [00:12:54]:
And, as we have discovered, just more bandwidth isn't necessarily the answer. So what regularly happens to me when I complain to my service provider, won't mention the name because they're all almost as bad as each other. Still, I think my service provider did rank absolutely bottom in terms of customer service, as they just say, look. They all they do is try and sell you. They try and upsell you more bandwidth. And it just isn't the solution because of the nature of which data actually transfers through the system, through the traditional transfer protocols. So we probably don't wanna get too much into the complexity of that. But for me, you know, breaking it down, when I look at the core things people want out of their Internet service, they want reliability. I need it to work all the time and very consistently.

Liz Allan [00:13:49]:
Yep.

Katherine Priestly [00:13:50]:
I wanna I wanna be secure. I don't wanna have cyber hacks.

Liz Allan [00:13:54]:
Yep. Definitely.

Katherine Priestly [00:13:55]:
So we've got stability and security there. I want it to be fast. I don't want to wait too long for anything to upload or download, and I want it to be private. I don't wanna have my information necessarily out there without me knowing about it. And when we've looked at how systems have been built, one on top of the other, What we observe is to secure to to solve for security, you might have to you've had to compromise on your speed and your stability in the past in order to solve for privacy or you think you're solving for privacy. A lot of people have gone to VPNs to solve for privacy, but they're very hackable. They're not secure as we know from hacks. They haven't and they're not secure, and they're certainly not fast.

Katherine Priestly [00:14:46]:
Adding a heavy what we call a heavy system on top of your existing system sucks your bandwidth as the as does as do, cybersecurity, software. So, what is the problem we're trying to solve for? We're trying to give you stability, security, speed, and privacy altogether without compromising at all and do that so that we can plug into your existing system. You don't have to strip everything out and start again and do it at a price you can afford. And that is Enigma Net.

Liz Allan [00:15:25]:
Oh, you're very good at doing this, aren't you? No. That's that's brilliant. That is brilliant. And so okay. The sectors that you guys work with, you're already working with different sectors. Okay. But, and you know who I've talked to on this podcast. What businesses would benefit most from using Enigma Net that aren't currently using it? 

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:15:58]:
There's a whole heap. I mean, anybody that you have to that relies on the Internet for their business in any way, shape, or form needs Enigma net. So it doesn't matter whether you are taking payments, whether you are transferring large files, you know, if you're a movie studio, a hospital, you know, if you if you rely on privacy and security, if you're, you know, infrastructure, if you're a pipeline, you know, an electrical distribution grid or anything like that, you know, anything where you need that security, that speed of transmission, or just a a constant uptime. You know, like we said, Liz, just even doing podcasts, Yeah. If you want to make sure that you never drop a call or a connection while doing these things, you would rely on the EnigmaNet. You know, there's technology in there that takes away all the inefficiencies from TCP protocols, and it helps bolster UDP as well by, you know, providing more pathways and things like that.

Liz Allan [00:16:54]:
Tell me those words. You'd given me words. I don't understand

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:16:57]:
Yeah. So, basically, TCP makes up 80% of all Internet transmission.

Liz Allan [00:17:04]:
Right. Okay. I just thought it was something you'd put on when you cut yourself.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:17:07]:
No. No. Everything you do is converted into a protocol, right down to where your copper or fibre enters your house. Yes, it's coming in as data packets. These packets can be either TCP or UDP.

Liz Allan [00:17:22]:
Okay. Okay.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:17:24]:
Now the thing is UDP is great. It's fast. The reason is they send out thousands of these packets, and they just hope they reach the other side. TCP relies on you actually handshaking with the other side and saying, I'm ready to send you a packet, sends you a packet, waits for you to say you've received it, sends another packet. Oh, god. It's an inefficient system. So one is very good at getting a lot of data out. One is very good at, making sure that it does it consistently.

Liz Allan [00:17:51]:
Yeah.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:17:51]:
Our tunnel does the best of both.

Liz Allan [00:17:53]:
Okay.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:17:54]:
Because our tunnel does the handshaking, and then we can send data in a similar fashion to UDP. Only we do something very special in the middle.

Liz Allan [00:18:04]:
Is yours, like, giving it a big hug, all of it?

Liz Allan [00:18:07]:
You're kind of hugging it. You're kind of going, come here. We'll look after you. We're gonna make sure that this customer has this. I'm hugging you now.

Katherine Priestly [00:18:15]:
Yeah. So we could do it very securely, which is very important for many business applications. But the other point is we could do it very fast. So we could do that. We can transmit data up to 64 times faster. And that is material because that builds a lot of efficiency into businesses. There are so many studies done about what British business is suffering as a result of poor Internet. And there's a vast array of numbers.

Katherine Priestly [00:18:46]:
So it isn't easy to pin down, sort of very reliable data. And, of course, it's growing by the day, but it's in the order of about £60,000,000,000 a year. It's a very big number from the inefficiencies of the Internet. So, and that doesn't really include the cost of cyber hacks. So that's a whole different number, you know, in its own right. So that we know you know, we hear the government talk a lot about worrying about the inefficiency of British business, the lack of productivity. We're sorting out the Internet and becoming efficient without changing, you know, making sure we've got fiber everywhere, without really changing what the ISPs do, just adding new technology, can be a game changer. So there's a very big purpose here, for all of us.

Katherine Priestly [00:19:41]:
But thinking about business applications, and where do we start? Because, you know, it's very, very hard when you've got a great tech and you've got so many potential applications. You go look for sort of early industry problems that you want to solve. And one of the ones that we've identified is the EV charging market, which I know is something very dear to your listeners' hearts. So Yes. You know, be happy to talk more about that if you like, Liz.

Liz Allan [00:20:08]:
Absolutely. Do you know what I wanted to say though? You've just opened my mind to something because of the work that I do with consultancy. I've been working in business improvement for a long time now, I've been to so many companies where half of their problem is that the systems that they use or are using or have introduced just don't give them what they need. I was working with a water company quite a few years ago over in, well, I don't wanna say where they are because that I'd really give it away. But this water company, all of their systems were just crashed. They were crashing. There were different systems that were not interconnected with each other. And there were things that we were talking about water companies. We're talking about another infrastructure.

Liz Allan [00:21:01]:
And the system that they were using was broken. All the systems they were using just weren't working. So everything they did took twice or 3 times as long. Now I'm talking about efficiency. That's part of what I'm, you know, as a consultant improving business is, you know, that's that's my joie de vivre. So actually looking at the money that they'd spent on things that weren't working

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:21:27]:
Yeah.

Liz Allan [00:21:28]:
It was horrific, you know. Because you're talking about people who were having to work till 6 and 7 o'clock at night, later because of the fact that the systems weren't working. They couldn't get their regular jobs done. You talk about you take, you know, some of those issues away. You're halving that time. They can do their jobs and don't feel like they're firefighting all the time.

Katherine Priestly [00:21:50]:
This is really at the heart of what we're trying to achieve. Yeah. It really helps businesses drive efficiency simply by having your data fast and securely transmitted around whatever your universe is.

Liz Allan [00:22:04]:
Absolutely. So let's just go back to what you were just saying then, Katherine, about identifying the EV charging sector as one that actually could do with Enigma Net to be as, you know, form part of what they're providing. Glenn, tell me why is that specifically EV charging? Why have you identified that out of, you know, the number of sectors you're already working with? What is it about EV charging that actually makes you think, right? Okay. This is a system. These are things that we need to sort out.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:22:37]:
I think it was a proximity thing for me because, obviously, one of our team members, who you've met, obviously, Steven, was part of that. I actually worked with Morris Commercial designing their electric van. So, you know, I went to the Fully Charged Shows, and I walked around Yeah. Got to talk. And the amazing thing is that there were a few car manufacturers when the first Fully Charged Show started. There were tens, if not, you know, 30 charging companies.

Liz Allan [00:23:07]:
Yes. I remember that.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:23:08]:
And, you know, I'm walking around and I'm chatting to them and I'm saying, well, this is great. But I can see that you've obviously got a payment terminal here. Do you know how you are getting around the issues with payment terminals? And they're they're all very guarded, and it was like, oh, we don't have any problems with that. We have no problems at all. And I'm like, come on. I've been in this industry for years. I can tell you now. You've got issues with that.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:23:28]:
How are you getting around it? And none of them had an answer, which meant that, you know, just like my off track betting terminals, just like my, you know, self-service kiosks in stores, I knew these people were gonna have issues because their infrastructure was relying on the same thing that we were relying on.

Liz Allan [00:23:46]:
Go on. Tell me, tell me about so what is it? Because obviously I mean, a lot I'm saying obviously, a lot of people don't realise what goes into a charge point. It isn't just about getting energy to that charge point. It's about the back office systems, the hardware, the payment terminal. It's all of the other kind of things that integrate into one product

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:24:06]:
Yeah.

Liz Allan [00:24:06]:
You plug into your car, so what was it? What was it about the payment terminal? What is it that causes a problem?

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:24:15]:
Yeah. So the thing with payment terminals that causes the issue, there's 2 things really that happened with payment terminals that cause this issue. One is PCI compliance. We'll get back to that in a second. The main thing that caused the problem was when they first launched chip and PIN devices, they came with something called a LAN controller.

Liz Allan [00:24:34]:
Right.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:24:34]:
What this LAN controller did was actually create a private tunnel to the payment gateway. Right? And that's how it processed it. This was back in the day when the Internet wasn't as congested as it was with everything else. So the first thing that happened with PCI compliance was that the card reader manufacturers were saying that providing this box to our customers was a barrier to entry. We wanna get rid of it. We can make the connections, secure enough that we don't need this. So they got rid of it. So they've solely relied on the Internet and their encryption to process payments.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:25:13]:
Now, that was fine before, you know, millions of these payment terminals went out. Before, you know, video conferencing exploded by 30 times during the pandemic, before everybody stopped using cash. Yeah? You know, this was all fine. Now the problem is that all of this data has to get to the payment processes and back within 100 milliseconds. If it doesn't, it triggers the false detection, and it thinks that there might be a man in the middle attack or there's some degradation, and it's not getting all the information to actually sign off that purchase. That's why you could be standing there and you do, you know, you tap your chip and PIN.

Liz Allan [00:25:56]:
Oh, don't. Yeah.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:25:57]:
And then they say, oh, sorry. It's not gone through. And it's because it hasn't completed it within 100 milliseconds. 

Liz Allan [00:26:02]:
Oh my god.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:26:03]:
Now the thing is, when you think about EV charging, it's got to authorise a much larger transaction. So, effectively, the checks are 3 times just your normal below £30 amount. You know, it's gotta send all that information. And the thing is, if you know, if the charger is in a remote location or it's in a congested location like a shopping centre or something like that, where a lot of people are, it's battling for a lot of traffic. So that's the one thing. So you've got the payment terminal within the device, yeah, that's, you know, gotta be sending this data.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:26:36]:
At the same time, the back end has to be in constant communication with that payment device and the charging unit itself to keep it updated of what's going on to say when it can release that charge or not. There are so many steps that it has to go through. If the connection drops or falters, even for a couple of seconds, that cycle has to start again. Yeah. Or it's held in a way that isn't technically legal because it's lost communication.

Liz Allan [00:27:06]:
Oh my goodness. I'm just going to give an example of something that my husband and I did just over a week ago. We went down to Bournemouth, and everybody knows who listens to the pod podcast regularly. Our car only has a small battery, a 38.5-kilowatt-hour battery. We had to charge it when we got there. It was cold.

Liz Allan [00:27:29]:
You know, you get less range when it's colder, which is fine. My husband was driving so we usually get more because he drives slower. But anyway, so we got down there. We knew we had to charge. I'm not going to say which charge point operator it was, but it was an older model and we wanted. There wasn't much in Eatbourne, so we went to this one model and we were there for 15 minutes. I'm not joking. It was freezing.

Liz Allan [00:27:55]:
I've mentioned the initiation dance, which involved tapping to pay, plugging in, and initiating. It wasn't the other way around. We were there for 15 minutes, but the payment terminal showed a big cross on the screen with an error message. It just wouldn’t go through.

Liz Allan [00:28:18]:
I now understand why what you're saying. But the other thing was, so we rang the customer support number. They rebooted the terminal. Or they rebooted the charger, and it still came up with that same error. So it sounds to me like, from what you're saying, there was a problem on the payment terminal first and foremost. Or maybe like you say, that connection with the back office or something had gone really badly wrong. And actually, this company is known for failing charges.

Liz Allan [00:28:49]:
It's not particularly highly rated. They are very well known, and I won't disclose who they are. But as I mentioned, they described it as a truly shocking experience.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:28:59]:
Like I said, you know, back in, I would say, 2005, there was one particular shop that had these. Because they knew of these issues, their fix was actually to put twice as many terminals in cope with the issue. And that was that and that was it.

Katherine Priestly [00:29:21]:
Which, of course, in turn just creates more congestion and so much inefficiency.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:29:26]:
Oh my god.

Katherine Priestly [00:29:26]:
You know, sort of doing a little research in the industry as we always do when we go to tackle an industry problem. You know, we can see the challenges to get more EV charging availability across the country. That's really important to obviously increase the number of EV cars on the road. But if, you know, if up to 30% of your EV charge is not working at any one time, which is the current current sort of stats, then what you know, you you naturally think you're gonna have to build over capacity in order to just be online for for for your demand at any one period of time. I mean, that's just a ridiculous way to go about things. What we've gotta do is make sure each and every charger works. So then you look at, well, why are charges failing? Yeah. And, you know, what comes up regularly is poor maintenance, and that can be software maintenance.

Katherine Priestly [00:30:22]:
That's not just, you know, the nozzle is broken or whatever it might be. That's quite often software maintenance, and they rely on the Internet to update their software regularly. And when the Internet's not working, you get a failure in updates of software, which will render the system, you know, with the big crosses you drive up.

Liz Allan [00:30:41]:
Yeah.

Katherine Priestly [00:30:42]:
And, of course, payments is the other massive frustration that there isn't enough network connectivity, connectivity issues, breakdowns, etcetera, etcetera. So payments are not being completed, so people can't access the EV charger. So those are really solvable things. Those are really solvable. I'm not saying that'll take away the 30% issues, but you're gonna see a radical decrease in the number of nonworking EV chargers. So we already have spent money putting that infrastructure in. And so you raise the efficiency of the industry really pretty quickly by by adding our system into all the charging stations. And it's not expensive.

Katherine Priestly [00:31:22]:
It's not complicated to do that, and it's not expensive to do that.

Liz Allan [00:31:26]:
And that's and that's the main thing because I know that the EV charging is is very expensive. Just put you know, you put in a DC a high powered g DC term, you know, charger in, and we're talking 1,000, and that's without actually the install installation costs. So so I know that the charge point operators will want, you know, they're they're obviously

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:31:47]:
charge point operators. Like, if that's down, they're not gaining revenue on it.

Liz Allan [00:31:51]:
So true.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:31:51]:
You know? And this is the thing, you know, that they should be motivated to do this because

Liz Allan [00:31:56]:
it's not

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:31:56]:
just about the customer experience. They're losing revenue. If they have to show up there and it's not working, instantly, customers are turned off to that particular location because they remember what they had the last time. They will find somewhere else. Yeah?

Liz Allan [00:32:09]:
It's like we only go back to that one we went to. We'll never go back that one we

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:32:14]:
went to.

Liz Allan [00:32:14]:
Exactly. You know, it's and it's so it's rev it's the 2

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:32:19]:
r's, isn't it?

Liz Allan [00:32:20]:
Re revenue and reputation. Yeah. You know, because, actually, your reputation drops and therefore, your revenue drops. And we're trying to, you know, we need to I've said this lots of times on the podcast. We need to boost that kind of, the the way people think about EV charging. Because if we are talking about situations like me and my husband experienced and I know this from from the work that we've done at Full Circle that actually lots of people you know, like you said, if you're saying, Catherine, 30% are

Katherine Priestly [00:32:49]:
In certain areas, those are the reports I'm reading. Yeah. You know, up up to 30%. Well, you know, on average, you know, the average numbers I've been reading is 17, 18%. Well, you know, can you imagine boosting your bottom your your top line revenue by 17, 18%. That's most of that's flowing down to you to your bottom line. Mhmm. And what savings could you pass on to your customers then? Think about what charge rates you could afford to give if you're the best in class here, if you've solved for these problems and are the best provider.

Katherine Priestly [00:33:22]:
You've got customer satisfaction. You've got the reliability as you said. You've got increased revenue, and you can afford to pass on some of that to your customers. Yeah.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:33:32]:
It's a good to scale, isn't it? 

Liz Allan [00:33:35]:
So basically, for the scale. And the reliability factor falls in. If we look at the UK charge point regulations, there's the reliability side of 99%. They have to be 99% reliable, not just turn the charges off, you know, to kind of avoid that bit of data because I'm sure they find it. You know? But, actually, making sure that those charges are reliable. So if we talk about just go back a second. So, what we're saying about with the payment terminal, if you've put that extra layer of strength into the Internet, are we looking, you know, or the signals that are going to the charger? Are we also looking at the fact that because there are some back office systems that are that kind of are problematic. But maybe that's because of the delay in the, you know, kind of or the instability.

Liz Allan [00:34:28]:
So that's gonna are we talking about it's gonna stabilize

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:34:32]:
Yeah.

Liz Allan [00:34:33]:
That. So, in order, it's not gonna like you said, Catherine, it's not gonna answer all of the problems, but it's gonna stabilize things enough to get to a stage where the payments are working and the back office system has got enough time to go. Is it that? Is it that? Is it oh, okay. We're alright now.

Katherine Priestly [00:34:50]:
But, Liz, you're absolutely right. Stability is almost as important as the speed. If you have regular, consistent, then you don't have breakages, you don't have, you know, the collapses, and you don't have breakages. So stability is almost well, they're probably, you know, equally important. Mhmm. And I and I think for all companies, particularly the ISPs, but the EV charges, Imagine so it isn't just the cost savings in in terms of the it isn't just revenue extra revenue generation. It's cost savings too. I don't know if you've ever examined the cost of customer service for either EV chargers, but particularly the ISPs, it's enormous Mhmm.

Katherine Priestly [00:35:34]:
Because they've got so many complaints all the time, the cost of taking calls, returning emails, investigating problems, the cost of customer service is enormous because you've got a subpar product offering. If you improve your product offering, your cost now you've got happy customers, and it costs you less. It's just win win win win win win win. But you have to embrace new technology. You know, you can't be the dinosaur, in the wilderness here. You've got to embrace new tech to move forward.

Liz Allan [00:36:10]:
And, actually, I'm gonna give an example. Again, I'm not gonna say who the CPO is, but there is a CPO who is known for getting the cables stuck in your car at both ends. And I experienced this in Suffolk last year last March at 11:30 at night. I'd left the car to charge in a hotel car park, and by the time I came back, it was charged. It was well, I knew it was charged because I'd seen it on my little app on my phone. And I got back to the car and the light the light was flashing green. So instead of, you know, kind of constant green, it was flashing green. And I was just thinking, oh god, what does that mean? I couldn't get onto the CPO's app and it wasn't saying anything.

Liz Allan [00:36:56]:
Oh, finish your session. Couldn't get the cable out at all. It's not what you need in a partly lit, you know, dimly lit car park at 11:30 at night, particularly. And bear in mind I just wanna say to everybody, please bear in mind. I know I come back with, you know, kind of examples of things where it's gone wrong. But I've had some really good experiences. But it's those bad experiences. And I'm happy to put up with these because I enjoy driving my EV.

Liz Allan [00:37:24]:
I love it. You know, I want loads of people to adopt this. But actually, if you think about this, lots of people who haven't got the tolerance to put up with this. It's a different kettle of fish, and that's what I think about the new people coming in. So I'll go back to my little story. So basically, I got the cable was stuck at both ends. So there was a customer support when I finally realised, because you couldn't really see where the customer support number was. When I finally realized, there was an automated chatbot saying and one of the options was, if your cable is stuck in your car, please do which was lock your car, open it 5 times, lock it.

Liz Allan [00:38:03]:
It was one of those. It was really and I just thought, do you know what? If you've had to have that on your answer phone, on your chatbot, it happens, not the root cause of this. Yeah. And I've written about this recently. And again, I've not talked about who it is, but people will know if they've had cables stuck in their cars. But it's about just solving the problem. Don't just put a stick in plaster on it. Try and solve the problem.

Liz Allan [00:38:29]:
And this is the stuff that I try and do as a consultant, you know, and what your system is trying to do. It's solving problems, isn't it?

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:38:37]:
The thing is is that could you imagine, Les, you know, we we all say, and I've I've heard it from, you know, all EV people. We've had good experiences, but we've had a few bad experiences. The thing is you can't expect people to accept any bad experience. The reason being, could you imagine now if our emergency services relied on that? Could you imagine? Yeah. They're gonna call. They gotta go, and then they're stuck talking to a chatbot because they can't get the cable removed. We can't allow things like these to happen. The problem is that we've got too much apathy.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:39:08]:
It's gotta stop. We have to demand perfection. We show up with our, you know, our, you know, internal combustion vehicles. We expect to put the fuel in and leave. EV people deserve the same thing. It's that simple.

Liz Allan [00:39:22]:
It's best practice, really. We we need to develop best practice, and that's kind of what I'm I'm all for. And that's part of, you know so your salute your solution is fantastic. The the work that I'm I'm doing is aiming for you know, we're all trying to push, you know, reduce that level of apathy and make sure that people are heading towards that level of best practice because it should just be an experience that you don't even need to think of.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:39:51]:
No. And the thing is is that's the way that we set up the business as well. Everything that we do is priced in a way that it basically becomes a no brainer. I mean, the total cost of ownership, I mean, they'll make it back in not having service charge callouts and everything else within a couple of months depending on which CPO you're looking at. One of them in particular, we know that they would actually get it back within a month. You know, this is how, you know, nonsensical it is that they're not looking to actually solve these solutions at their root cause, you know.

Katherine Priestly [00:40:23]:
Oh, yeah. On the payment on the payments, Guardian product, which is one of the fundamental sorts of ways to help EV charging, it has failover ability within the technology. And we should probably explain that a little bit because that's all payment terminals sort of everywhere. So, obviously, the Internet can be intermittent. We, you know, we know that. And, we can't you know, if the service provider cuts their Internet service for whatever reason, we can't solve for that.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:41:00]:
Mhmm.

Katherine Priestly [00:41:00]:
But what we can do is have an instant and automatic as we see the degradation of an Internet service provider system, so not when it's failed, but as it's degrading Mhmm. We can instantly and very quickly fail over into a 4g or a 5g, solution. And then the system will constantly be checking when the Internet comes back on with a strong enough signal that we can fail back into, you know, the sort of the more classic Internet connection. So the the idea is you should always be able to connect through either 4 g, 5 g, or the Internet. So this ability for the software to be able to fail over and fail back very, very fast and not at the point of failure, but at the point of degradation, is a big part of the solution here. So you're not relying on one system. You've got backup solutions, within your service.

Liz Allan [00:42:03]:
Which is really important. So so I was gonna say, so do you when so this is about being proactive rather than reactive, isn't it? So, when you see a service like this start degrading in the way that you're talking, talking about, and like you say, you've got these backups as well. Do you also feed it back to your customer and say, you know, we've seen this degradation. It's going, it's decreasing by x. And maybe either you need to change provider or, you know, do you provide that feedback to them, or do you just kinda keep giving them that, you know, that stability?

Katherine Priestly [00:42:41]:
So one of the things I think is probably pretty unique about Enigma Net is, we are working on and, surely, will be able to provide customers with, very detailed information about how their Internet is functioning. Yeah. So I don't know how popular that will actually be with ISPs because, you know, when I call up and they say, oh, we've just tested your line and there's absolutely nothing wrong. It's so infuriating when you know you've had breaking systems, you know, for the last 48 hours, and they tell you, oh, everything's fine. I think it's gonna be very, very helpful for consumers, businesses to be able to say, well, here's my report of what you've actually been doing over the last 24, 48 hours, week, month, whatever it might be. And that's going to really show up the shortcomings of their services.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:43:39]:
So the ISPs, when you call up and you've got a complaint about the service they're providing. They will point you to a speed test, which they operate. Yeah? They will ask you to obviously call in every time and actually make the complaints and everything. So, yeah, we're gonna become a bit of a thorn in the side because we'll basically be able to provide them a full report, probably, for whatever duration that they want to show actually how much bandwidth they were actually receiving over a period of time. 

Liz Allan [00:44:08]:
Yeah. Oh my god. Well, do you know what? Giving them a test like that, it's like marking your own homework anyway, isn't it? Yeah. I'm gonna give you this test. Nudge. Nudge. You know? Wink. Wink.

Liz Allan [00:44:19]:
It's not gonna do anything. So we're just gonna tell you a great big fib saying our systems are absolutely perfect. But, yeah, you might as well just go back to DialUp, but we're not gonna tell you that.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:44:31]:
Yeah. That's the problem. You know? The ISPs are self-regulating, and they've been allowed to do this by Yeah. OFCOM. You know? It's an act of criminality. You know? Yeah. The reality of it is is, like, you know, if you go and buy, you know, if you go and buy petrol or your your EV and you go and pay for, you know, 1 kilowatt and you get, you know, 0.5 kilowatts, you've got grounds of a complaint for that. Yeah.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:44:56]:
Weights and measures. The Internet does not have to abide by those rules. Oh, god. They can tell you that they are giving you 1 gigabit per second. They only legally have to provide you with 500 megabits per second, but they keep advertising it as 1 gigabit per second.

Katherine Priestly [00:45:15]:
So that was a big discovery for me, Liz, that the Internet service providers are only required to give you 50% of what you've contracted with them. And the awful thing is you don't always get that. 

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:45:30]:
So imagine you are a CPO, and you've paid for your 4G SIMs, for example, and you think, right, okay, I need a minimum of 4 megabits per second upload. Because that's the bare minimum that I need just to get the payment terminals to work and to communicate with my device. And then the reality of it is, without them knowing, all they're getting is 2. We found this with security companies that run CCTV cameras and other things like that. This is the issue that they're having. I spoke to one company, obviously in the states, and they said, yeah, we can't get these cameras to work out in the US. We got these 4 g, 5 g SIMs.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:46:06]:
We should have 500 meg download. And I said, right. Okay. You do realise that's only downloading. Your upload is, like, 50. And they were, like, well, no. We should be getting it both ways. I said, no.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:46:17]:
No. No. 4 gs SIMs are asymmetrical. It's usually only 10% of what you're actually paying for, and then you get 50%. Yeah. So they needed 60 megabits per second. They were getting 20. Oh my god.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:46:31]:
Yeah.

Liz Allan [00:46:32]:
And this is it. So so okay. So can we just talk for a second about data breaches? Because, so, what is actually happening that you know of? I mean, I've I've heard of data breaches and hacking into charging, and I don't want I didn't particularly want to out it like this, but but actually, you know, we we need to recognize that that this stuff, if it is in the public well, it's not the public domain, you know, on the Internet and inverted commas, that it is potentially hackable. What's happening, Glenn?

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:47:06]:
So this comes down to companies like NordVPN and Shark, you know, all the standard VPN providers. Their protocol, effectively, is something called OpenVPN. And, you know, it should say it in the name. It's OpenVPN. It's a source that people have used to create their own VPN networks. Right. But it's available to everybody. Mhmm.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:47:29]:
Because it's available to everybody, everybody's figured out ways to exploit it. You know, they keep on putting more encryption on it, but, yeah, fundamentally, they know where to go for it. Mhmm. But what's made the breaches worse was that the owners of the companies that run these VPN services have all had data breaches. At some point, all the users' usernames and passwords have been hacked. So if you've got a CPO, for example, that set up these VPNs 3 years ago, they may not even be aware that all of their passwords have been compromised.

Liz Allan [00:48:04]:
Jesus.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:48:05]:
So somebody can just literally get within the network, and then they can go and do whatever they want to do. That's one way that the breach has actually happened. The second way is obviously that people can actually, just bombard, you know, the service, you know, the denial of service attacks and everything else like that. Ransomware, you know, so they can literally, you know, hold these hostage. And I can see at a point that that will also start happening to the CPOs, and they are not protected against it. You know, a lot of their infrastructure is cloud-based, for whatever reason, cost rollouts, you know. And that is another point of weakness because where it is in the cloud, there's no real secure way for them to get to to their devices. Mhmm.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:48:51]:
You know, they are trying to get, Microsoft, AWS are pushing these costly, VPN services they've got. But to give you an idea, to one of one location, they could be paying up to anywhere from 1500 to £2,000 a month for that service.

Liz Allan [00:49:11]:
What? No way.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:49:14]:
You can see why many people will roll the dice, and maybe not have all of their security in place. You know, and that's the thing, you know, is that most of this, most of the security out there, it's kind of like, a protection racket. Do you know what I mean? They show up and they are like, yeah, we can sell you this and you've gotta take this to keep you safe. Yeah. And then when a breach actually does happen, they say, well, you didn't do everything we told you to do. You're on your own. You know? And they they they kind of hide behind what's called, ISO 27,001 for this. Mhmm.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:49:49]:
And they've actually put the owners of the data breaches back to the people that use the service rather than the ISPs or the big cloud providers.

Katherine Priestly [00:49:59]:
I I think we should be clear. Keeping you informed, getting on top of and even trying to get ahead of cyber hacks is a really, really hard thing to do. You know? There are very sophisticated computers and people who are constantly thinking about how to access, how to get in, how to breach. And very famous companies and governments and government infrastructure, you know, have been hacked. So this isn't an easy thing to solve. And if you solve it today, it doesn't mean you've solved it for tomorrow. It's a constant ongoing issue. A con is that it's a very hard thing to stay in touch with.

Katherine Priestly [00:50:45]:
But thinking more clearly, using new technology and figuring out how your data is transmitted is a key sort of first step.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:50:59]:
So the way that we do it to sort of get around the majority of the breaches, for example, is our servers, for example, don't rely on things like VMware, for example, which had a horrendous, breach, several years ago, which took down numerous servers all around the all around the world. The second thing is because, obviously, our tunnel is proprietary, you know, built by a guy in the UK, there is only a very small number of people that actually know the actual source code of the actual tunnels. So you've got that level of security that it isn't open to everybody. The other thing is how we can obfuscate the data as well. So, for example, we don't have to send your data down one private tunnel. We can actually send it down several. So that even if one was breached, they're not getting all your data. They're only getting portions of it, and they can't do anything with it.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:51:58]:
Blimey.

Liz Allan [00:51:59]:
So this is what you're looking at, aren't you? Why aren't other people doing what I know you said you're gonna be a thorn in people's sides in some ways, but why aren't other people doing this, and how are you doing it all? How cost-effective are your services? You know, what would people say, you know, how much people would be paying if they went for one site on a you know, with Microsoft or whatever. How cost effective is it? Is it for them to use EnigmaNet then?

Katherine Priestly [00:52:39]:
So, if we're just talking about cybersecurity and cyber hacks, companies, governments, and organizations will always have their security layers and levels, no question. And we don't want to interfere with any of those structures at all.

Katherine Priestly [00:52:57]:
We should be really clear. We don't wanna substitute for anyone's infrastructure. Mhmm. We call our overarching technology and plus with a hopefully simple message, there that we add into, we're additive. That's the and bit. Then, the plus bit is that we will give you all these enhancements. So we're not trying to disrupt any structure that exists. We know that's quite a hard decision for companies, people, businesses, organizations, etcetera.

Katherine Priestly [00:53:34]:
But if you can have this overlay, if you like, in the way that your data is transmitted, and you can make yourself stable, secure, faster, and more private, if you could achieve all of that, as we said, in a cost-effective way, we want to make that a very, very easy decision. Mhmm.

Liz Allan [00:53:57]:
If somebody's interested in talking to you about this, what do they need? Where do they need to go? How do they find you? I think this bit is really important, and I will provide your web details and other things like that in the show notes. Where's the best place to find you both?

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:54:17]:
Well, yeah. If you just head to enigma net dot ai, then obviously, we can reach out to us. You know? Again, you know, our contact details are all there, you know? Phone us, you know, anything. We're here to help.

Liz Allan [00:54:32]:
Okay. And I think I'm going to ask you one final question because we've gone through so much here. It's just blown my mind, but in a really good way. What if you wanted the viewers and listeners to remember you for one thing?

Katherine Priestly [00:55:05]:
We can give you reliable, stable Internet services for all your applications, bearing in mind that there are 27 devices in the home, on average, that are attached to the Internet. So a lot of home use as well as business use. We can provide you with reliability, stability, your privacy, and security. We can give you that whole combination of minimum required services, and we don't have to compromise, you don't have to compromise on any of it.

Liz Allan [00:55:40]:
I mean, you've sold me, especially, you know, sort of sort of the even just as a small business. You know, it's I I, realise from the things you would talk about, ring ring doorbells and all the other tech related stuff, I don't have a I don't have a Wi Fi, enabled, what's it, kettle just yet? But I, you know, this we're all doing this, aren't we? Whether you're at home or whether you're in your business. And if you're running a business, you really need to ensure that everything you've got is secure. It's held. It's it's not it's not hackable or breachable. So, if you've got this wrap around that will provide that and fill in those potholes, then why not? Gosh. Is it fair that I'll leave it open to you for a second, Glenn. Is there one final thing that you'd like to let people, you know, kinda think about just to leave it in their minds kinda as we leave?

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:56:39]:
Yeah, I think the main thing I'd encourage people to consider is how much the Internet affects them when it is not working.

Liz Allan [00:56:48]:
Yeah.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:56:48]:
You know? And it's not until you ask yourself that question, because you just sit there and accept what's going on, that you don't even consider fixing it. You know? The minute you start thinking, yeah, you know, it's taken me ages to upload this video, it's taken me ages to send this file, or I can't connect to this service. You know? Have a look at how much time that is taking. And if it's taking up more than you're prepared to give up or costing you, do something about it. Yeah. You do not have to accept what you're given. Yeah. You know, make a change, make yourself more efficient.

Glenn Melford-Colegate [00:57:20]:
Yeah. Ultimately, we're all looking for is to regain some of our time.

Liz Allan [00:57:25]:
And like I said, time is money. Yeah. You know? And actually, as I I gave the analogy earlier on, if you if something that you are doing is affected by your your connectivity or the system that you're working on and, you know, it's it's not efficient enough, you need to do something about it, and this is one place that you can do it. So on that note, I'm just gonna say thank you. Again, honestly, I think we've. I'm hoping we have broken this down into simple terms. But, yeah, please head to Enigma Net, you know, to the website. I will provide all the information, links, and things like that for Glenn and Katherine in the show notes. But actually, I think as well, for those of you watching and listening, if you know or are a charge point operator, please listen back to this.

Liz Allan [00:58:18]:
Listen to it again, because or just talk to Glenn and Katherine, because as an organization, you need to make sure that not only you're not hackable, but your users, you know, your EV drivers that are plugging in are not hackable either. You know, that they're the ones who keep the data breaches down to a minimum. And if they can support you, know, do the wraparound on the payment terminals and make sure that you're providing that stability, then please share it with CPOs who actually may not be listening to this. And I always ask everybody to share, like, and comment. But this one is really important because I don't think many people realise that the Internet has so many potholes. So on that note, I'm gonna just say thank you to Glenn and Katherine. It's been wonderful talking to you. And to everybody else watching and listening, I'm gonna say thank you, and I shall see you next time.

Liz Allan [00:59:16]:
Bye.

Katherine Priestly [00:59:17]:
Thanks so much, Liz, for having us on. We do appreciate it. No worries. Nice to talk. Bye. Bye. Bye.