Guardify, a digital evidence management startup based in Omaha, recently announced its acquisition of a case management tool developed by the National Children’s Alliance (NCA). Called NCAtrak, the software solution has an over 20-year history of serving Children’s Advocacy Centers (CACs) nationwide. 

NCA is a national association and accrediting body of about 1,000 CACs. Within their communities, these centers aid victims of child abuse through trained staff and the expertise of medical professionals, law enforcement and other partners. 

Guardify CEO Ben Jackson said its acquisition of NCAtrak will better position the company to provide a full suite of tools to serve its customers. While the startup has expanded to serve prosecution offices and law enforcement, Jackson said CACs were the company’s original core customers and continue to be the guiding force in Guardify’s mission. 

NCA CEO Teresa Huizar said that the organization created NCAtrak because it couldn’t find any software products on the market that specifically addressed the work and sensitive data of CACs and their multidisciplinary teams.

“We knew that kids could fall through the cracks of an overburdened criminal justice system if those responsible for a case couldn’t easily track what was happening across all the systems those kids would encounter along the way,” Huizar said in an email.  

Huizar said Guardify — which has been an NCA corporate partner for about a decade — has proven its commitment to CACs with its understanding of the field and beneficial tech offerings. 

“The reason why we’ve worked closely with NCA, from kind of the beginning, was mostly so we could learn — because being a tech company in a nonprofit space is foreign,” Jackson said. “There’s a need for some translation.”

Formerly known as VidaNyx, Guardify features include encrypted downloads, editing tools for video and audio redaction and automatic transcription trained for child voices and common language spoken in abuse cases. 

Last year, the company acquired Engage Vision — a video intelligence startup from Nebraska — and integrated its computer vision tech into Guardify’s.  

Jackson said his team is updating, reworking and further growing its product line in three spaces: case management, evidence management and hardware integration, such as working with physical cameras and recording tools. With NCAtrak under Guardify, he said the startup has an opportunity to introduce more potential customers into its own solutions.  

However, Jackson said he doesn’t want Guardify to disrupt the impact of NCA and NCAtrak. As part of the acquisition, he said Guardify will not force platform migrations and will still run and optimize NCAtrak for current users. 

Additional terms he discussed include the startup offering free data migration services for NCAtrak users wanting to try Guardify and a specialist from NCA joining Guardify’s 22-person team for continued customer support. 

Huizar said the future of CACs is one pressed by “long-term sustainability” concerns, mentioning funding worries and pending federal legislation. But she celebrated Omaha and its championing of local child advocacy organization Project Harmony.

Jackson, who mentioned Guardify’s own origins linked to Project Harmony, said the company was determined to improve CAC workflows and create more time for meaningful, human interactions already impacted by traumatic experiences.