Epowar Sets New Benchmark for Secure Women’s Safety Apps

Violence against women and girls (VAWG) remains a critical issue in the UK, highlighted by high-profile cases and ongoing national focus, including the Angiolini Inquiry, which identified the need for stronger safeguards to better protect women. Research by UN Women UK, conducted with YouGov, also found that 97% of women between the ages of 18-24 had experienced some form of sexual harassment.

In response, a growing number of mobile personal safety apps have been developed to help women feel more secure. Epowar is one such app, designed to sync with a smartwatch it uses AI to track heart rate and motion to detect distress, sending an alert to trusted contacts and pinpoint an instant geo location in the event of an attack or emergency.

For Epowar’s co-founders, E-J Roodt and Maks Rahman, two priorities were important when they developed their safety app; ensuring women’s digital safety was as robust as possible to protect sensitive data and achieving police-recognised endorsement though Secured by Design (SBD). This would build users confidence and trust in the app and enable it to be recommended by government, statutory bodies, and charities.

SBD’s Secure Connected Device accreditation now includes a new dedicated testing framework for mobile-app security. The scheme recognises IoT smart products and a mobile apps that have met robust cybersecurity standards, ensuring they have taken appropriate steps to protect customers and their data.

SBD spoke to the co-founders E-J Roodt (CEO) and Marks Rahman (CTO) to find out more about their app and their experience of the app accreditation process.

What motivated you to create Epowar?

E-J: While I was a second-year student at Bath University, we were warned about a man following girls home, we were all petrified. My mum was so worried she bought me a rape alarm, but I felt it was useless - who has got time to fish out a rape alarm from their bag if they’re being attacked?

When Apple announced they could monitor heart rates with the Apple Watch I had a light bulb moment – what if there could be a smartwatch that could detect an attack based on heart rate and movement?  That’s where talented engineer Maks came in.

How does your app keep women and girls safe?

Maks: We created something called the ‘Automatic Attack Detection’ technology, which identifies sudden changes in heart rate and movement that could indicate distress. If triggered it sends an alert to trusted contacts with a live location.

There’s also an SOS button that can be activated on your smartphone which sends an alert to contacts, and critically this feature can work from a locked screen, so you don’t have to try to open an app to send a distress signal. This can be used without a smartwatch too.

Epowar also generates an ‘evidence’ pack, including microphone recordings, vital signs, and an activity log including a location map. This is securely stored automatically in the cloud, just in case a person is separated from their phone.

How does Epowar differ from other personal safety apps?

Maks: A key difference is our patented Automatic Attack Detection technology, which we’ve developed and tested extensively.

E-J: We’re also very focused on being survivor-centric. Some apps rely on constant location tracking, which can also introduce risks such as a controlling partner, Epowar has been designed to be activated when needed and give the user all the control.

But one of the most important elements is the evidence pack. We’ve worked closely with digital forensic police teams to ensure the data we collect is compliant and is robust enough to have evidential value in court.

Why is there a need for evidence gathering?

E-J: Female safety is a global crisis. Research shows 1 in 3 women have experienced harassment or violence, yet so many times cases don’t go reported, or if they do there isn’t enough evidence. Often it comes down to one person’s word against another and repeat offenders are walking free.

For us evidence gathering is key –  Epowar can pinpoint a location, a time and record what’s happening. This evidence can be used by digital forensic police teams who can then look at CCTV in the area, and other markers to hopefully build a picture of events that strengthens cases that go to court.

Maks:  Our long-term goal is to help change the STATS for convictions; it’s a national emergency that women are experiencing sexual harassment and violence on a day-to-day basis. Our mission is to make this abuse harder to get away with and for Epowar to become a deterrent.  Most of us own and use a smartphone and tech can play a big part, and we should be able to use these tools to help empower women.

Why was it important for you to get the SBD Secure Connected Device mobile app accreditation?

E-J:  From the beginning it was very important to us to work with the police and the public sector to tackle violence against women and girls. We wanted to get police endorsement through SBD, so when the app accreditation was launched, we jumped at the chance.

Maks: Cybersecurity is also really important to us. We don’t store any personal data, journey data or user data and privacy is a top priority. We take women and girls safety online very seriously. But it was important for us to validate this through independent testing and achieve accreditation against the globally recognised OWASP ASVS standard.

I also want to add it shouldn’t be the burden of the consumer to think about their cybersecurity and safety. It should be the responsibility of the app developers. It’s too easy nowadays to get AI to create an app, but who is checking that your data is safe if you’re using that app?

Having this accreditation demonstrates to your users that you’ve taken all the steps you can to help keep their personal data safer and you take their cybersecurity seriously.

What did the app accreditation process involve?

Mak: The app was independently tested against a the OWASP ASVS Level 1, a globally recognised benchmark for cybersecurity and is assessed against areas like data protection, secure storage, resilience against common threats, device tampering, safe error handing and logging.

As we have features like location sharing, real-time alerts, cloud-based evidence data these were all assessed to ensure they did not introduce vulnerabilities or increase risk to users.

We had to present all our development and testing processes, but the whole process was clear and accessible.

Did you have to make any improvements or changes to your app?

Maks: We did have to review areas around our jailbreaking protections to ensure the evidence pack we produce is completely tamper proof. Secarma (the third-party testing house) were very thorough and made some recommendations which we implemented before we received certification. They made the whole process straightforward, they were easy to work with, and it went very smoothly. I would definitely recommend this to others.

What impact will the app accreditation have on Epowar?

E-J: It was always our goal to have police endorsed through SBD. It gives us credibility and gives our users confidence and trust in our brand knowing that we are doing everything we can to protect their safety offline, but also online.

It also opens doors for us to work with public bodies, charities and other partnerships. It gives our investors’ confidence too in our product.

Being the first to achieve the mobile-app accreditation for our personal safety app though is a huge milestone for Epowar and we want to shout about it from the rooftops!

What’s next for Epowar?

We’ve got some exciting developments in the pipeline – watch this space.

Michelle Kradolfer, SBD National Manager said, “I am delighted that Epowar is the first personal safety app to obtain our SCD app accreditation. Digital safety is no longer optional, it is fundamental to protecting women and girls in today’s connected world. The SCD app accreditation scheme is a positive step forward, giving companies like Epowar, clear, robust standards to build security into their apps and play a role in preventing tech-enabled abuse, as well as reducing the risk of harm both online and offline to women and girls. It’s fantastic to have Epowar on board!”

Epowar can be found on their dedicated SBD member’s page here and is available to download via the Apple App Store and Google Play.