From Cybersecurity Challenges to Green IT Solutions: The Vision Behind KERYS Software

Thomas Girard is the co-founder and CEO of KERYS Software, and in this exclusive interview with Eqvista, he shares insights drawn from nearly 20 years at the forefront of cybersecurity. Before founding KERYS, Girard identified persistent inefficiencies—over-provisioned and underused hardware—across enterprise IT environments, which motivated him to launch KERYS Software alongside a team of fellow French engineers with a shared vision and extensive experience.

In this interview, Girard describes the company’s commitment to rigor, excellence, and transparency, and explains how KERYS Software’s sovereign microkernel architecture enables multiple secure work environments on a single device without sacrificing performance or compliance. Guided by a hands-on and future-focused mindset, as showcased in this Eqvista interview, Girard continues to pioneer solutions that make IT infrastructures safer, greener, and more agile, preparing organizations for the evolving demands of cloud, edge computing, and AI.

Thomas, you have nearly 20 years of experience in cybersecurity before founding KERYS Software. What key insights from your career prompted you to start KERYS?

In my previous lives, I often saw time information systems with too much hardware due to a lack of secure or efficient technology for sharing resources. The result? Tons of hardware was underused, misused, or not used at all!

KERYS Software workstation product itself stems from observations made while using different workstations that were usually underperforming or impractical – we needed to find a solution to make the lives of teams easier. The four founders of KERYS Software are French engineers with a 15+ year history together. United by the same alma mater, a hands-on mindset and a bold vision for the future of IT, we bring deep expertise and unstoppable drive.

We share a pragmatic yet ambitious vision for the tech industry and a commitment to addressing its current and future challenges.We are guided by three core values:

• Rigor— A cornerstone of KERYS Software’s culture from day one, rooted in both professional standards and personal discipline.
• Excellence — A promise to clients and a constant pursuit in research and development.
• Transparency— Providing clients with full security validation and proof.

With the average number of corporate computers per employee in Western Europe and the US now at three —and climbing— companies are facing unsustainable IT expenses. Worse, much of that hardware remains underutilized due to security or performance constraints. Drawing on technology originally developed for supercomputers, KERYS Software created a secure, one-of-a-kind solution that consolidates multiple operating systems onto a single machine, representing a true paradigm shift in enterprise computing. The result: a fast, intuitive, training-free experience that lets users switch between work environments instantly.

KERYS Software aims to enable secure virtualization where it was previously impossible. How do you define the core mission of KERYS?

KERYS Software delivers a unique solution that enables multiple work environments to be shared on a single computer in a completely secure manner. KERYS Software clients see immediate and substantial savings through a dramatic reduction in the hardware issued to employees. These cost advantages are further enhanced by the additional workspace created and the productivity gains resulting from a more rational working method.

KERYS Software transforms the user experience by introducing an elegant, ergonomic workflow that allows employees —previously tied to separate machines—to switch between operating systems with a single click. As a mission-driven company, KERYS Software significantly reduces carbon footprint by cutting down on the purchase and use of computer hardware. We aim to create safer, greener and faster IT infrastructures without compromising on performance. We want to help companies reduce infrastructure needs up to 70% for the same service, minimize shadow IT and save costs.

How does your approach to virtualization differ from traditional solutions in terms of security and performance?

Virtualization has been around for 50 years but is still based on the same architectural model. An emulation layer abstracts the actual hardware to present standardized components to virtualized environments. Our approach is different: we remove this emulation layer to enable direct communication between the hardware and the working environments. We describe ourselves as a ‘hardware splitter’.We aim for the highest level of security possible, with upcoming certifications in the works. Our user-friendliness and seamless experience are strong USPs. We cover new use cases and are particularly relevant in the context of European cybersecurity regulations.

What are the primary industries or customer profiles that benefit most from KERYS’ technology?

Key users include anyone who normally uses two IT workstations. For example: administrators, developers, or R&D teams. We help companies who are looking to reduce their IT-related costs by limiting the amount of IT equipment bought and replaced, and companies who are looking to reduce their IT carbon footprint by limiting equipment use and energy consumption.

KERYS Software delivers fast, measurable savings by reducing hardware needs, optimizing workspace and boosting employee efficiency. KERYS Software calculates ROI based on Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), which includes purchase price plus indirect costs such as acquisition, setup and maintenance.KERYS Software offers an estimated ROI of 7—meaning every $1 invested in KERYS Software saves $7 over time (based on a 3-year average computer lifespan). For example, a company with 500 employees—each currently using two computers—can save approximately $1 million over three years. A 500-employee company with two computers per person can cut over 200 metric tons of CO₂, including mining impacts. Yet in Western Europe and the US, employees now average 3 corporate computers —up from fewer than 2 a decade ago— driving costs and carbon waste.

In the future, KERYS Software could also provide a secure, all-in-one solution that merges personal and professional computing into a single device—supporting new, eco-responsible IT practices. Our product is also thought of and built for critical sectors with highly secure infrastructures.

Your solution is based on a sovereign microkernel architecture with near-native performance. Could you explain how this architecture provides both security and efficiency?

As a next generation of low-level hypervisor, we had the possibility to develop a product without legacy constraints, fully leveraging modern computer architecture. This would not be possible if we already had an existing product based on traditional virtualization concepts.

This new way of segregating and splitting local hardware resources (CPU, GPU, peripherals, etc.) is able to achieve top-tier security certification. We already partner with world-class laboratories that specialize in formal proofs and provide direct access between isolated work environments and actual hardware, without emulation, providing near-native performance usage.

What ongoing support and training does KERYS provide to customers adopting your platform?

The installation itself is carried out in around 3 minutes.

YS::Desktop, our workstation-oriented solution, can be mastered in less than 3 minutes with our built-in tutorial for all users. 

We provide ongoing support to our testers and customers to make sure the solution fits their needs.

Can you talk about your zero trust and confidential computing model and its significance in today’s cybersecurity landscape?

These two concepts are modern ways to implement a cybersecurity approach built directly into the product, designed to integrate easily with existing information system architectures. Zero trust is about not providing unknown and unauthenticated access to resources. 

Confidential computing is about isolating data within an environment from the underlying hardware and from other environments hosted on that hardware. These security-by-design approaches will become tomorrow’s standard architecture.

What are the biggest challenges in advancing virtualization technology in regulated and critical sectors?

The first and main challenge we see is shifting mindsets around designing secure or regulated architectures. We provide a new way that enables what is currently technically impossible or forbidden. We have an immense challenge to communicate around this new architecture approach. Conveying the understanding that in most cases logical separation can be as secure as physical separation.

Congratulations for recently securing €6.2 million in pre-seed funding. How do you plan to use this investment to accelerate KERYS’s growth?

Thanks! At this stage, we want to structure the product offer and accelerate product suite go-to-market, with exciting product news to come in the next few months. Structure the company to prepare PMF, repeat business and scaling. Grow the team and hire at key positions to support company growth. Additionaly build relevant partnerships to move the company forward and expand our activities internationally beyond Europe, notably in the USA and Singapore.

How do you see the virtualization market evolving over the next five years, particularly with the rise of cloud, edge computing and AI workloads?

Big question! If I had to share some insights, I’d say that Edge computing is expected to significantly shape system architecture, given the current capabilities of edge devices, especially for local GenAI applications. Cloud and more generally datacenters will continue to grow for their central part, but we will want to make smaller datacenters (edge datacenters) to provide regional service near customers.

The vast majority of IT that is not currently virtualized due to security or performance concerns will be virtualized with new kinds of pooling and sharing solutions, such as those from KERYS Software, notably because of the cost (build, run, energy consumption), to make more efficient use of the massive amount of hardware already deployed, and yet to be deployed.

What advice would you give to entrepreneurs who want to start a company in the cybersecurity or virtualization space?

Each adventure is different, but I can say that someone must be determined, confident and optimist, and most of all well supported by friends and family, as well as other entrepreneurs for feedback and advice. It’s a terrific human journey with ups and downs that you have to ride out!