Harold Smith III is Building Faster Ways to Fix Things
Developing secure solutions from the ground up
Harold Smith, Monkton’s CEO, knows that moving faster requires doing less. This is the ethos of Monkton Inc, the company he co founded with three other teammates, Chris Gorman, Steve Thompson, and Will Gaskins. Since Monkton’s 2016 inception, the organization—which builds bespoke solutions that make privacy, security, and compliance accessible to all—has become the sole owner of a federally-wide $500M Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ), MATTER (“Mobile Apps to the Tactical Edge Ready”).
When Harold first started engineering and coding more than 15 years ago, he was fresh out of college looking to make his mark. After quickly building and selling a medical prescription reminder app—then followed by a mobile security company—he realized problems are problems, regardless of domain. Today, at Monkton, Harold is on a mission to use Cloud Native capabilities to deliver solutions at the speed of relevance for every customer, saving them money and bringing desired functionality to life faster.
Below, we delve into Harold’s entrepreneurial journey and his vision for Monkton.
Q: Your work is highly technical. What’s the most simple way to explain what you do?
Harold: My job is multifaceted. I help with customer delivery, but my main focus is developing ways to help solve future problems. I work with clients and help them look ahead 10 years from now to identify issues before they occur. Day-to-day, I have interactions with everyone from executives to end users, and work extensively with our partner network to find out which organizations can help our customers solve their particular problems.
Q: What kind of framework allows you to ‘Build Faster Ways to Fix Things?’
Harold: At Monkton, we follow the idea of “code is code.” We strongly believe the Function as a Service (FaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) development approach empowers customers with an Event Driven Architecture (“EDA”). These services are fully managed by cloud providers, like Amazon, Google, and Azure—enabling Monkton to focus on building the best solutions and not worrying about managing infrastructure. With this approach, code doesn’t have to change with the environment—it can produce the same result every time.
This “code is code” methodology enables us to define infrastructure as auditable code—consisting of managed components in the cloud—empowering us and our customers to focus on delivering the best outcome possible with these technologies. Be it AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, or Google Cloud Functions—each enables developers to focus on writing code and capabilities, not how the code runs somewhere.
A well-known example of EDA is Apple’s Push Notification Services (APNS) or Google’s Cloud Messaging. In these architectures, end systems (e.g. phone, computer, cloud or mainframe) subscribe to the notifications relative to their application, which allows massive scale by the provider (Apple/Google) and real-time event notifications by the consumer.
Q: Tell us about the history of Monkton. What’s been done and who are you hoping to help in the future?
Harold: The main reason I started Monkton was simply to solve problems faster, and I saw a way to solve problems faster than the companies I was working for. No one was using mobility the way I knew it could be used, and I wanted to break down those barriers and partner with the right companies that have the same philosophy. Apple was my first partner company after forming Monkton, and they are a major partner to this day.
Solving problems faster remains our main focus today. Because we are such a lean team that leads with an agile development mindset, we can deliver solutions to customers on time, on budget, and hopefully always exceed their expectations. We are very forthcoming if we do not have expertise in a particular domain—that’s why we invest heavily in working with the best partner companies in the industry. If we don’t know how to do something, we will find the best in breed that does. We want to continue working with organizations, and partner companies, who are committed to change and are not afraid of taking risks.
Q: What are a few key accomplishments you proud of?
Harold: Our first project was with the United States Air Force developing a mobile maintenance app, BRICE, for iOS. In less than four months, Monkton went from kickoff to user acceptance testing.
At the onset of the pandemic, Monkton’s work with the Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) resulted in the award of the MATTER IDIQ, a government wide, Indefinite-Delivery/ Indefinite-Quantity contract. The first task orders on MATTER were to assist United States Northern Command (NORTHCOM) with solutions to service members at field hospitals, like the JARVIS Center, the USNS MERCY, and USNS COMFORT. Within only one week, Monkton created an IATT IL-4 with HIPAA data environment to test. Just three weeks later, Monkton delivered the first Edge-based mobile solutions to solve mission needs, like PPE management and force tracking. Within that same time period, we also achieved a full DoD IL-4 ATO, which is used for systems with non-public, unclassified data.
Continuing our work with AFSOC, we developed further Edge-based technologies, allowing warfighters to do their job—no matter where in the world they are. This includes building Edge-based apps that are connected to cloud resources. One particular app, for example, Balanced for iOS, enables AFSOC Load Masters to easily calculate weight and balances for their aircraft.
Q: What is one immediate change industries can make today to prepare for tomorrow?
Harold: Just because something has been done one way for the past 30 years does not mean it must continue being done that way. Companies need to be willing to take risks. We won’t see changes in government until someone pushes past their comfort zone. One of my favorite quotes is by Grace Hopper, a trailblazer in the male-dominated STEM field. She said, “Humans are allergic to change. They love to say, 'We've always done it this way.' I try to fight that. That's why I have a clock on my wall that runs counter-clockwise.”
Q: When did you decide to pursue a patent?
Harold: Steve Thompson, also one of Monkton’s co-founders, and I thought it was a good idea to improve the security of mobile and IoT devices. We saw a trend of credentials being stolen, and wanted to develop a way to uniquely identify devices and eliminate spoofing. Not only is this important, but no one else was talking about it and we wanted to make it happen. We started the years-long process and in 2021, obtained a patent for Monkton Anchorage. It enables immutable hardware-based Zero Trust of IoT, mobile, and Edge Computing devices.
How Anchorage Works:
Anchorage’s patented immutable hardware-based Zero Trust solution works on any device that has a dedicated security component processor (“DSC”, also known as TPM/SEP/TEE) to securely identify users, Edge Computing, and IoT/IIoT devices.
Q: What are the biggest problems Monkton is solving right now?
Harold: Because we work so much with the government, the main problems we see are 1) bringing legacy problems into the future and 2) building forward-facing solutions that leverage new technologies, so other systems can interact with them. One of the biggest challenges is developing user-centered solutions with security and compliance right off the bat.
People expect to operate in a digital world and are used to mobility and “on-demand” functionality in their day-to-day life. We want to take that mindset and apply it to the government. The problems we solve are ultimately dependent on hearing feedback from the end-users, which is why we work with them at the onset of every project to make sure their feedback is heard and incorporated.
Want to work with Harold? Email support@monkton.io and request a demo of our latest products.