A company named after a star.
A product named after a judge.
Alcyone Secure builds Rashnova, the evidence layer that keeps an honest record of what happens on your laptop. Both names were chosen for what they mean, and this page is the story of both. Our thesis has not changed: security is not just prevention. Security is accountability.
Alcyone is the brightest star of the Pleiades.
The star above our owl is Alcyone.
The Pleiades sit on the shoulder of Taurus, a small cluster of stars that people have used to mark the seasons for thousands of years. In Persian they are called Parvin. Alcyone is the brightest of them.
We named the company after it because a bright, fixed point is what you need when you are trying to find your way back to what actually happened. The owl is the watcher that sees in the dark. The star above it is Alcyone, and it is the first thing you see in our mark.
Persia sealed every record.
So nobody could quietly change it.
Between 509 and 457 BCE, the administrators of Persepolis wrote every movement of grain, wine and flour on a small tablet of clay. Each tablet recorded a single transaction. Each one was rolled with a seal, so anyone could see who had authorised it and that nobody had altered it since.
More than fifteen thousand of those records survive. We know how the empire ran, day by day, because somebody kept an honest record and sealed it.
Rashnova does the same thing for your laptop: one entry for every event, each one sealed to the one before it.
Rashnu weighed every deed.
He could not be deceived.
In the Zoroastrian tradition of Persia, Rashnu is one of the three judges of souls, called “the straightest”. At the bridge between worlds he weighs a life on golden scales that favour no one: not the rich, not the powerful, not the person being judged.
“As much as a hair’s breadth it will not turn.”
The tradition weighs three things: good thoughts, good words and good deeds. Rashnova keeps only one of them. It never reads your thoughts (what is inside your files) or your words (what you type). It keeps an honest record of deeds: what was done on the machine, and when.
RASHNOVA
RASH · NO · VUH
Rashnu, the judge who could not be deceived. Nova, a star that suddenly shines bright, a new light beside Alcyone. Together: an honest record of what actually happened, whoever did it.
A recorder is orange
so it can be found.
Aviation’s flight recorder is painted international signal orange, so investigators can find it in wreckage. It is engineered to survive the crash, the fire, and the ocean floor, because its only job is to make sure the truth survives the event.
It does not prevent the crash. It makes the truth recoverable, and that single property changed aviation from the most dangerous way to travel into the safest.
We borrowed the colour and the job description. Rashnova records what happens on your device in a form that cannot be quietly rewritten. Not prevention. Evidence.
STATUS
RECORDING
INTEGRITY
SEALED
CONTENT
NEVER READ
Three colours.
Zero decoration.
Our palette is lifted from the same aviation and industrial safety vocabulary as the product. Each colour has a job. If it doesn’t have a job, it isn’t on the page.
INK
#050505
80% · THE ENVIRONMENT
Controlled environments, where sensitive operations happen. The dark a recorder works in.
PAPER
#F2F0E4
15% · THE RECORD
Clarity and transparency in reporting. The colour of a document you can trust.
SIGNAL
#F25C05
5% · THE ALARM
International safety orange, chosen by aviation so the truth can be found in wreckage.
Five plates,
bolted on.
These are engineering constraints, not marketing values. Every feature we ship has to pass all five, and anything that can’t is not built, no matter how good it would look on a roadmap.
PLATE 01
LOCAL FIRST
Activity stays on the device by default. You stay in control.
PLATE 02
PRIVATE BY DESIGN
Every entry is encrypted on your device before anything leaves it.
PLATE 03
CRYPTOGRAPHIC INTEGRITY
Records are tamper evident. Alteration is detectable and provable.
PLATE 04
WORKS OFFLINE
No continuous connection required. Syncs securely when one returns.
PLATE 05
DELIBERATELY SMALL
One job, done well, on primitives the industry has trusted for decades.
Anyone who has handed a laptop to a repair shop knows the feeling. The machine that holds your photos, your money, your work: in a stranger’s hands, behind a counter you can’t see past. And every security product you own has gone quiet, because none of them were built for this.
Antivirus looks for malware. It was never built to notice a person. The technician browsing your files, the colleague at your unlocked desk, the intern with day one access to everything: they don’t break in. They are handed the keys, and they look exactly like normal work.
Rashnova is our answer. Not prevention, a witness. A recorder that writes down what happens to your device in a form nobody can quietly rewrite, encrypted so that nobody, including us, can read it but you.
We are building it deliberately small and deliberately honest: local first, sealed before it leaves the device, provable when it matters. If we do this right, you will never have to wonder what happened while your device was out of your hands.
Trust is good. Proof is better.
Sathvik R
FOUNDER · ALCYONE SECURE
Everyone in security says they know data protection. We hold ourselves to the same standard as the product, don’t claim it, file it.
Certificate in Data Protection Law
Asian School of Cyber Laws: the DPDP Act, end to end. Taken before Rashnova charged anyone a rupee, for one reason: if you build an evidence recorder, you should know first hand what the law counts as evidence and what it calls protected. Cert № 1763720948-9193.
VERIFY ↗B.Tech, Computer Science
The formal foundation under the practical work.
Offensive security
Self-taught, proven on real client engagements. CPTS path (Hack The Box) completed: you can't build a witness for attacks you've never run yourself. Hardware included.
Pre-founding research
Months inside the stolen data trade before the company existed, tracking how drives leak from repair counters and where the files surface. The findings are published on this site.
READ THE CASE FILES ↗The paid version came second.
On purpose.
Q. You spent years on this. Version one earns nothing. You could have built the paid company product first, why didn't you?
A. Because Rashnova was never a startup idea. A friend and I were tracking Telegram channels that trafficked stolen private photos, most of them of women, most of them Indian, none of them aware the pictures existed. We reported channels; new ones appeared the next day. One night I asked an operator where the photos came from. His third source broke me: repair shops. Technicians copying customer drives before repairs, paid per dump. The customers never knew. I couldn't stop thinking about it. So I built the product that didn't exist.
Q. What did version one cost you?
A. A small room, one PC, more research papers than I can count, more nights than I want to remember. I lost people along the way. I almost stopped, more than once. I didn't. The money making version stayed on the shelf the whole time. This one had to exist first.
Q. Then where does the money come from?
A. Companies. The recorder is free forever: that's not a launch offer, it's the point. The cloud layer we're building gets funded the way GitHub is: businesses pay for fleet features, and their money holds the price for individuals at zero, or close enough not to matter. Students, women, parents: the people who need this most shouldn't have to pay to protect themselves from an industry that profits off their trust.
What we will never do.
The register reads zero.
Promises are cheap, so each order below carries its own running tally instead. Five numbers, one acceptable value. This register is append only, orders can be added, never removed.
Read your files.
FILES OPENED
0
Hold a key that opens your logs.
Keys never leave your device: we could not comply with a demand to decrypt, because we physically can't.
LOGS WE CAN DECRYPT
0
Sell or share what the recorder sees.
RECORDS SOLD
0
Put ads anywhere in the product.
ADS SERVED
0
Phone home without being asked.
SILENT BYTES SENT
0
IF A NUMBER EVER MOVES, YOU HEAR IT FROM US FIRST · PUBLICLY.
AND THE PLAN · HOW THE ZEROES GET PAID FOR
Shipped. Free for individuals, forever.
In build. Businesses pay for fleet features.
Companies carry the cost; people fly free, or so close to free it doesn't matter.
THE GITHUB MODEL: ENTERPRISES FUND THE RUNWAY, INDIVIDUALS FLY FREE.
UNTIL THEN, DEVELOPMENT IS PAID FOR BY OUR DPDP COMPLIANCE AUDIT PRACTICE · NOT BY YOUR DATA.
Short history.
Long runway.
The company log, kept the way the product keeps yours: append only, each frame sealed, the next one still on the runway.
- FRAME 0012025LOGGED ✓
Founded
Alcyone Secure registered in India with one idea: devices need a witness, not another guard.
›chain = genesis - FRAME 0022026 · V1LOGGED ✓
The recorder ships
Local capture, every entry sealed to the one before it, forensic reports. Free for individuals, forever.
›chain = sealed · 9c1a… - FRAME 0032026LOGGED ✓
It takes its name: Rashnova
Rashnu, the Persian judge whose scales favoured no one, and nova, a new star beside Alcyone. An honest record of what actually happened, whoever did it.
›name = rashnova · rash NO vuh - FRAME 0042026 · 1.1LOGGED ✓
The evidence layer
Always on capture when you switch it on, the weekly Readout, Repair Mode with a sealed report, and every USB device and every copy to one on record. No account needed in the app.
›chain = verified · local - NOW · IN FLIGHT
- FRAME 005NEXTSHIPPING
The cloud layer
Encrypted off device backup that survives a wiped machine, and optional location on the record.
›sync = offsite · aes-256 - FRAME 006LITESHIPPING
Rashnova Lite
The recorder goes mobile, a proper Android app, in development now. A small Rashnova for your phone that doubles as your authentication key for the desktop software. Lands with V2 or just behind it. The rest stays sealed until launch.
›android · auth = your pocket - FRAME 007NEXTSEALED
In development. Announced when it ships: we don't hand our roadmap to our adversaries.
›████ ████ · classified
INDEPENDENT · BUILT IN INDIA · ALIGNED WITH DPDP ACT 2023, GDPR & CCPA
TRUST IS GOOD. PROOF IS BETTER.
The story is nice.
The record is better.
Rashnova is free, forever, on your device. Install it today and read your first Readout by Sunday.