Pantherun Revolutionizes Edge Security with Real-Time AI-Powered Encryption

"Today, edge devices have less than 1% protection rate." This startling statistic from Srinivas Shekar, Founder and CEO of Pantherun Technologies, exposes a critical vulnerability in our increasingly connected world. As cameras, sensors, and IoT devices proliferate across every aspect of our lives—from surveillance networks to autonomous vehicles—they're collecting sensitive data with virtually no protection. Traditional encryption is too resource-intensive, too slow, and too vulnerable to key exchange attacks.

Pantherun's solution represents a paradigm shift in cybersecurity: a patented AI-powered encryption technology that delivers real-time AES encryption at speeds up to 10 Gbps while eliminating the single biggest vulnerability in modern cryptography—the key exchange. By using AI to generate encryption keys in real time on both ends of a communication channel, Pantherun has created a system where no keys ever travel across the network, making them invisible to hackers.

This isn't just incremental improvement—it's a fundamental reimagining of how encryption works at the edge, where data is most vulnerable.

The Founder's Journey: From Silicon Design to Cybersecurity Innovation

Shekar's path to founding Pantherun reads like a masterclass in technology entrepreneurship across multiple domains. An engineering graduate from India with a Master's in computer engineering specializing in chip design and VLSI from the US, he spent the early part of his career at the cutting edge of semiconductor technology.

His first role was at Rockwell, a massive semiconductor company where he worked purely in the aerospace field, building silicon for industry giants like Boeing, Airbus, and Lockheed Martin. "I was working on motor control solutions on silicon," Shekar recalls. "This went on to become digital signal processors in future, made popular by TI."

But the entrepreneurial pull was strong. Shekar returned to India and became one of the earliest employees at Spar Soft Computers, a company that built complete product solutions for customers. Over 10 years, the company designed more than 20 different phone models for Samsung, infotainment systems for Audi and BMW, and grew to over 600 people with Shekar as CEO. In 2013, the company was acquired by Intel.

The Second Venture: Industrial Communication Success

After the Intel acquisition, Shekar didn't rest on his laurels. He founded Atch Solutions in the industrial communication space, building products in India, manufacturing in Taiwan, and selling in 40 countries around the world. He ran this company for five years before exiting in 2019.

Throughout his career, Shekar had always worked at "the cutting age of technology, mostly in the communication space." He had done extensive work building encryption and cybersecurity technology into networking. This deep technical background, combined with his entrepreneurial experience, positioned him perfectly to identify the massive gap in edge device security.

The Problem: Why Edge Devices Are Sitting Ducks

The cybersecurity landscape in 2026 is characterized by unprecedented awareness and equally unprecedented vulnerability. "There's a lot of awareness, a lot of interest in building protection," Shekar notes. "Everybody knows this is the need of the hour because attacks are happening every day around the world."

But awareness alone doesn't protect data. The fundamental problem is that while servers and cloud systems have robust encryption, the billions of edge devices collecting data about us remain virtually unprotected. "These could be cameras around us which take care of our security, sensors that regulate air conditioning in our buildings, sensors that turn on and off lights around us," Shekar explains. "Our car is collecting a lot of information about how we drive, how the road is, which routes we take. Our phones are collecting so much of private information about us."

Why Traditional Encryption Fails at the Edge

The reason edge devices remain unprotected isn't neglect—it's physics and economics. Traditional encryption requires significant computational resources that inexpensive devices simply don't have. Even more problematic is the public key infrastructure (PKI) required for key exchange, which needs expensive hardware investments.

"Encryption today takes a lot of resources, so it's difficult to build into the smallest of devices," Shekar explains. "It also requires a lot of expensive infrastructure in terms of protecting of keys that need to be exchanged over the network. People don't make that investment for surveillance networks because the camera is inexpensive—they cannot put those kind of resources on that network."

The Solution: AI-Powered Encryption That Eliminates Key Exchange

Pantherun's breakthrough addresses the fundamental vulnerability that plagues all modern encryption: the key exchange. In traditional cryptography, when two devices need to communicate securely, they must exchange encryption keys over the network. This key exchange is the single biggest vulnerability because hackers can intercept these keys.

"Hackers are sitting on networks for months together undetected," Shekar explains. "They can see this key exchange, get access to the key, get access to the algorithm that you use to generate the key, and they are able to find the key to decrypt packets."

The traditional solution has been to build very expensive hardware to manage and protect key exchanges—but you can't put that kind of expensive hardware on a surveillance network or low-cost IoT device network. The result: most edge devices simply go unprotected.

Real-Time Key Generation with AI

Pantherun's patented approach is elegantly simple in concept but revolutionary in impact. Instead of exchanging keys over the network, both the sender and receiver use an AI-based algorithm to generate identical encryption keys in real time, independently of each other.

"We use an AI-based algorithm to generate keys in real time," Shekar explains. "Keys are generated in real time, data is encrypted, only encrypted data flows. No key flows. At the destination, the key is generated in real time again to decrypt data."

This approach eliminates multiple vulnerabilities simultaneously:

• No key exchange: Keys never travel across the network, so they can't be intercepted
• No expensive infrastructure: No need for PKI or key protection hardware
• Real-time performance: Encryption happens at line speed without delays
• Quantum-safe: Even future quantum computers can't break keys that don't exist on the network

The Technical Achievement: 10 Gbps Real-Time Encryption

What makes Pantherun's solution truly remarkable is that it doesn't sacrifice performance for security. The company has achieved real-time AES encryption at speeds up to 10 Gbps—fast enough to encrypt high-quality video streams from surveillance cameras without introducing latency.

To understand why this matters, consider a modern surveillance camera. "When you need to do facial recognition, you need very, very good quality video streams," Shekar explains. "Those video streams today—the camera captures those videos and streams them at speeds of up to 10 Gbits per second. The camera has the ability to take this kind of video stream and stream it, but it does not have the resources to encrypt that stream."

Pantherun's compact implementation of AES encryption can sit on low-cost devices like cameras and encrypt these high-throughput streams in real time. The encryption is transparent to the application and introduces no latency—all while being more secure than traditional approaches that rely on vulnerable key exchanges.

Real-World Applications: Protecting Critical Infrastructure

The implications of Pantherun's technology extend far beyond consumer surveillance cameras. Shekar provides concrete examples of where their encryption is already protecting critical systems.

Metro Rail Signaling Systems

Metro trains rely on sophisticated signaling systems that ensure two trains don't crash into each other on the same track section. These systems are completely automated—but until recently, the communication between signaling boxes had minimal protection.

"These are very large networks—Metro runs for hundreds of kilometers," Shekar explains. "Till date they did not have much protection as these signaling boxes communicated with each other. With every signaling box we provided our encryption so that encrypted data flows and there is no way to hack into that network and break the signaling system, create accidents."

Industrial Safety Sensors

In industrial environments where robots work alongside humans, safety sensors detect human presence and immediately stop machines to prevent injuries. These sensors must communicate instantly and reliably—but if their communications were hacked or spoofed, the results could be catastrophic.

"There are sensors called safety sensors which keep track of any intervention that happens and then stops the machine or stops the robot so that the human doesn't get hurt," Shekar describes. "We provided our encryption solutions there as well."

Cybersecurity Advice: Protecting Yourself in the Digital Age

While Pantherun focuses on enterprise and infrastructure security, Shekar offers practical advice for individuals concerned about their personal cybersecurity. His recommendations combine basic hygiene with advocacy for better corporate practices.

Personal Cybersecurity Fundamentals

"It's important to make sure that our passwords are updated regularly," Shekar advises. "Don't share personal information, don't share passwords." This includes being vigilant about phishing attempts that arrive via email or other channels trying to trick you into revealing sensitive information.

He also warns against public WiFi networks. "Try not to get on public networks—particularly because there are ways in which people can break into your devices from public networks. When you share information on public networks, not all of it is encrypted."

Demand Better from Companies

Individual action can only go so far. Shekar emphasizes that a significant portion of cybersecurity responsibility lies with the entities we interact with—banks, service providers, and companies that hold our data.

"A lot of protection has to come from the entities that we work with," Shekar argues. "Companies have to use better technology. When they provide solutions we're working with banks, we're working with companies—companies need to use protection all around. That's one of the reasons why Pantherun has built this out, because we see a very big gap in protecting data. There's not enough technology to protect it at all levels."

He advises consumers to push companies toward better security practices. "We should try to make our companies also influence our companies into protecting data end to end. Now you have zero trust as well. This hardware is expensive, but it does provide protection. Adopting more and more protection approaches while safeguarding our personal data like passwords, our individual identification data—those things do go a long way."

Entrepreneurship Wisdom: From Three Decades of Building Companies

Shekar's three decades as an entrepreneur across multiple technology sectors provide valuable insights for founders navigating the challenges of building technology companies.

Building and Retaining Great Teams

When asked about the challenge of assembling talented teams—particularly for technical founders who may not naturally excel at people management—Shekar offers refreshingly honest perspective. "This is honestly a question that is very, very hard. It's something that I may have been doing this for 30 years—it's something that I'm learning on every day."

His approach begins with a fundamental mindset shift. "We don't all start with the best interpersonal skills—it is something to build on. We don't always start with the best technical skills—it's something to learn. The idea is to talk to more people."

Shekar emphasizes the importance of continuous conversation and openness. "As an entrepreneur, you have to always be willing to talk to more people. In a conversation that you feel is not leading anywhere, you may find the right person to manage your team. It may not be a technical conversation that you think is going anywhere, but then you might find a partner who's like-minded, who believes in your abilities, whose abilities you can believe in to manage the team."

Leadership Through Listening

For technical founders who struggle with interpersonal skills, Shekar offers simple but profound advice: "Look and listen to people. Even if you're not the best conversationalist or communicator, listen to them. If people feel that you're listening to them, hearing them—people feel that much more close to you."

Once you've identified someone who can solve a piece of your puzzle, "then you pick and choose: okay, this person can do this for me. Try to sell them on your vision. And many people will join if your vision—you believe in it yourself—you will be able to communicate that part of it and people will believe it then."

The Entrepreneur's Reality Check

Shekar doesn't sugarcoat the challenges of entrepreneurship. "This is not there is no one solution to this. This is you need to find solutions for the varied kind of problems that you'll find. But that's the difficult part of being an entrepreneur—but that's also the part that interests a lot of people."

He frames entrepreneurship as a journey that includes both mundane tasks and ambitious goals. "Entrepreneurship is not about the mundane—it's about something different that you're aiming for. Of course, there will be a lot of mundane things to do if you have to get to wherever you're aiming for."

Future of Cybersecurity: Quantum-Ready Protection

Pantherun isn't just addressing today's threats—the company is already preparing for the quantum computing revolution that threatens to break much of today's encryption. "We're even building it so that you have encryption that is quantum-safe," Shekar reveals.

Quantum computers, when they become sufficiently powerful, will be able to break many current encryption algorithms much faster than traditional computers. This is particularly concerning for data that needs to remain secure for decades—government secrets, medical records, financial data.

By eliminating key exchange and using AI-based key generation, Pantherun's approach provides inherent protection against quantum attacks. Even if a quantum computer could break AES encryption (which is still theoretical), there's no key to intercept on the network in the first place.

Key Takeaways: The Future of Edge Security

Pantherun Technologies represents a fundamental shift in how we think about encrypting data at the edge. By eliminating key exchange vulnerabilities and bringing military-grade encryption to low-cost devices, Shekar and his team are addressing one of the biggest gaps in modern cybersecurity.

For Enterprises: The less than 1% protection rate for edge devices represents unacceptable risk. Pantherun's technology enables protection for surveillance networks, IoT deployments, and critical infrastructure without requiring expensive hardware upgrades or sacrificing performance.

For Security Professionals: The key exchange vulnerability is the single biggest weakness in modern cryptography. Pantherun's AI-based approach to key generation eliminates this vulnerability while maintaining compatibility with AES encryption standards.

For Entrepreneurs: Shekar's journey demonstrates the value of deep technical expertise combined with customer-focused problem-solving. By identifying a specific gap—edge device protection that traditional encryption couldn't address—Pantherun created a solution with massive market potential.

For Individuals: While companies bear significant responsibility for data protection, individuals must practice good cyber hygiene and demand better security from service providers. The future of cybersecurity requires both technological innovation and consumer awareness.

The Bottom Line

As AI moves to the edge and IoT devices proliferate, the attack surface for cybercriminals expands exponentially. Traditional encryption approaches can't keep pace—they're too expensive, too slow, or too vulnerable to key exchange attacks.

Pantherun Technologies has reimagined encryption for the edge device era. By using AI to generate keys in real time, eliminating the fundamental vulnerability of key exchange, and delivering performance that meets the demands of real-time applications, they've created a solution that finally addresses the edge security crisis.

For Shekar, this is just the latest chapter in a career spent at the intersection of communication technology and security. "Throughout my career, I've always been focused on building encryption and cyber security technology into the networking space," he reflects. "I saw a gap in protecting of edge devices—Edge is becoming very important today with Edge Computing and AI moving to the edge."

That gap is closing—and with it, the vulnerability that has left billions of devices unprotected for far too long.

About the Founder

Srinivas Shekar is the Founder and CEO of Pantherun Technologies, a cybersecurity innovator specializing in edge device protection and real-time encryption. With over 30 years of experience in technology entrepreneurship, Shekar has built and exited multiple companies across semiconductor design, industrial communication, and cybersecurity.

His career began at Rockwell Semiconductor, where he built silicon for aerospace applications. He became CEO of Spar Soft Computers, which designed products for Samsung, Audi, and BMW before being acquired by Intel in 2013. He subsequently founded Atch Solutions in the industrial communication space, building products sold in 40 countries before exiting in 2019.

Shekar holds a Master's in computer engineering specializing in chip design and VLSI. As a Forbes Technology Council member and recognized expert in cybersecurity, he provides thought leadership on quantum-safe encryption, edge security, and the future of data protection in an AI-driven world.