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Varonis Systems

Varonis Systems – A Software Company That Started To Mainly Protect Unstructured Data.

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In 2005, Yaki Faitelson and Ohad Korkus founded Varonis Systems to help organizations track, visualize, and protect their unstructured data. Varonis Systems is based in New York City, US and it has R&D offices in Herzliya, Israel. Varonis offers services globally and it has approximately 1,700 employees and more than 7,000 customers.

Though Varonis is a computer software company working to protect the unstructured data of its clients, it works a bit differently than other conventional cybersecurity firms. With the help of various platforms and data-tracking technology of Varonis, organizations can keep a real-time awareness of how every employee is accessing and using data to stop any malicious attacks.

About Varonis Systems

Since data is at the center of every organization, Varonis builds advanced platforms to help clients protect their unstructured data. In every organization, multiple malicious attacks that compromise sensitive data take place both from an external and internal source. To protect data, Varonis performs User Behavior Analytics (UBA) to identify any abnormal behavior before a cyberattack. The principle working pattern of Veronis is to extract the metadata from an organization’s IT infrastructure and then use the necessary information to map relationships among employees, data, etc.

Varonis has multiple types of products as per the need of a customer. Some of them are DatAlert (UBA and Data Security), DatAdvanatge (Data Governance and Data Protection), DatAnywhere (Enterprise File Sync and Sharing), etc. In 2008, the company made it to the list of Fast 50 Reader Favourites. Earlier this year, the company was awarded a Cyber Catalyst designation for its data security platform.

Varonis Systems
Image source: tadviser.com

The Idea Behind Founding Varonis

A big idea doesn’t emerge out of thin air. Whenever we are trying to find a solution to fix our problem, we hardly have any idea that how many people can benefit from an effective solution. The idea to establish Varonis Systems always emerged as a solution when the two founders were trying to find a solution to protect data. In 2003, an oil and gas company almost faced a disaster when they took high-resolution images of the ocean floor. But, one day the photographs suddenly disappeared from their server and no experts were able to discover what took place.

Unable to understand if the data was deleted by an accident or deliberately, the security experts saw an opportunity in the software industry. With every passing data, data is becoming more valuable to an individual, an enterprise, a nation, and to the whole world. So, security and systems experts (who previously worked at NetVision and NetApp), Yaki Faitelson, and Ohad Korkus founded Varonis Systems in 2005. They wanted to give organizations more visibility to their data and protect sensitive information.

History Of The Company

Varonis offers multiple ways for an organization to protect its data from both the employees of the company and external sources. The company mainly addresses issues like file activity tracking, access control, and information rights management. Varonis enables a company to track the behavior of an employee in the data server and if there is any abnormal behavior the system will be alerted. The co-founders created a system such that it would be able to extract metadata in the file systems.

While they were developing the product, they brought Dr. Jacob Goldberger, statistical modeling and machine learning expert onboard. He mainly helped the team to develop the algorithms that would provide the user data link. In 2005, these three people filed a patent and it was approved in 2006. The same year, Veronis released its first product, DatAdvanatge so that enterprises can monitor their file activity, data access rights, user behavior, etc. After a few years, the company added the IDU Classification Framework so that the system was able to search for various keywords and phrases. The main investors of the company are Accel Partners, Evergreen Venture Partners, Gitano Venture Capital, and EMC.

Yaki Faitelson – CEO Of Veronis Systems

Yaki Faitelson is the co-founder and current CEO of Veronis Systems. He is also the Chairman of the Board. Before co-founding Veronis Systems, Yaki served at many leadership positions in the global professional services and systems integration divisions of NetVision and Network Appliance.

ESET

ESET – Establishing a Secure Digital Environment for People.

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Though having computers connected with the internet has brought lots of benefits for people, making the work faster and accurate, it has also caused some threats to the same work. With the rise in the facilities with the technology, people are now more prone to data theft and malware on their computers. So since we needed the IT field to grow, we also needed some software and techniques to tackle such situations. For that, many companies started to work to provide security in the form of antiviruses and firewalls such that from surfing on the internet to making huge transactions online have become safer.
One of such companies that have been working to make the internet a safer place for people is ESET. ESET is almost 30 years old and has earned a good reputation as a security software development company in the industry. In fact, ESET is one of the most successful Slovak IT companies in the IT industry. The company provides security solutions for Windows, Linux, Mac as well as Android devices.

About the Company

ESET is a Bratislava, Slovakia-based software technology company, founded in 1992. The company mainly deals in the development of antivirus and security software. It has a long product list, among which, ESET Smart Security for Windows, ESET Cybersecurity for Mac, ESET Mobile Security for smartphones, and ESET SysRescue Live the most famous ones. The company is the home for more than 1700 employees and as of 2018, made revenues worth €504 million. In the past thirty years, the company has successfully expanded its operations overseas, having its multiple branches based in over 200+ countries, including the US, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, and Australia, etc.

ESET
Image source: 1000logos.net

The Founding of ESET

Rudolf Hrubý, Peter Paško, and Miroslav Trnka are known as the founders of ESET. Miroslav Trnka and Peter Paško had already worked together on the antivirus software named NOD in 1987. The two met Rudolf Hrubý and partnered with him to build a new company, named ESET. The name was taken from the Egyptian goddess of health, marriage, and love. The three founded the company in 1992 with NOD as their first product. In 1998, they brought the next version of NOD, the NOD32 Antivirus, which in the same year was awarded the first Virus Bulletin Test award. The success of the product helped the company to grow outside the country as well, and they opened branches in countries like the US, Argentina, Singapore, etc., during the same time.
In 2001, ESET went on to open another branch in Prague, Czech Republic, and in 2008, the company established its Research and Development Center in Poland. The next year, the company was honored with the CNET Editor’s Choice Award under the Internet security suite category for ESET’s Smart Security 4. In 2011, the company was awarded the Global Customer Value Enhancement Award, followed by the North American Endpoint Security Products Customer Value Enhancement Award in 2012.
In 2012, ESET established another Research and Development Center in Montreal, Canada. Till now, Company has established 13 such centers in different parts of the world. The company also launched its first authentication product named ESET Secure Authentication as well as the Managed Service Provider (MSP) Program, in 2013. The company’s Endpoint Security software also won the Best Antivirus Software by Maximum PC in 2013. In 2018, the company became a part of 40 companies’ initiative to protect the end-user data providing cybersecurity through the Cybersecurity Tech Accord program.
Compay provides cybersecurity as well as antivirus solutions to homes, offices as well as enterprises. Smart Security, Internet Security, NOD32 Antivirus, Cyber Security, Endpoint, Remote Administrator 6, ESET SysRescue Live are some of ESET’s major products.

The CEO at ESET

Richard Marko is the current CEO at ESET. He has been voted as the “Most Respected CEO” in Slovakia in 2015, by 121 business leaders. Marko went to the Slovak Technical University in KoÅ¡ice and received a graduate degree in Information Systems Department in 1996. He has been with the company from the very beginning and was one of the authors of ESET NOD32 Antivirus scanning engine. He worked as the Chief Software Architect of the scanning core for a period of ten years, and in 2008 he was appointed as the CTO at ESET. In January 2011, he became the CEO of ESET.

Trend Micro

Trend Micro – The World’s Largest Web Security Firm.

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The past few years have been years of fast growth for the internet and other web services. From sending instant messages to making online payments, everything has been really easy for every person. But with this ease of doing things, the internet has also brought danger to the security of data and other important assets online. To deal with such situations, lots of firms and developers are already working dedicatedly to ensure safer web surfing to making big transactions online for people. One such name which has been successfully providing cyber security services to its clients is Trend Micro.

About The Company

Trend Micro Inc., aka Torendo Maikuro Kabushiki-Gaisha, is an American-Japanese multinational cyber security company founded on 24 October 1988. The company has its global headquarters based in Tokyo, Japan, and Irving, Texas, United States. It has been working to provide software solutions, cloud computing as well as cyber security services to its clients all around the world for the past 32 years. The cyber security solutions by Micro Trend cover all platforms based on VMWare, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Amazon AWS, etc. The company has also launched its research, development, and support center, named TrendLabs, operational in different parts of Asia, Europe, and North America.

Trend Micro
Image source: wikimedia.org

The Founding of Trend Micro

Steve Chang, along with his wife, Jenny Chang, and her sister, Eva Chen, founded Trend Micro on 24 October 1988 in Los Angeles. The company started off by selling protection dongles to a United States-based Rainbow Technologies. Soon the founders shifted the company headquarters to Taipei, and Trend Micro acquired a Japanese software firm in 1992, moving the headquarters to Japan. The company bagged a contract from Intel and supplied anti-virus to the latter. Intel also helped Trend Micro to sell its anti-virus in the US and Europe.
In 1996, Trend Micro partnered with Novell. The company got listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 1998, and the next year, it start to trade on the United States-based NASDAQ. The company expanded its operations by acquiring companies like Braintree, Third Brigade, Identum, Kelkea, InterMute, and Provilla, etc. These acquisitions also helped Trend Micro to open offices in various parts of Europe, America, and Asia. By the end of the 2000s, Trend Micro was already making IP filtering software, antispyware programs, antispam software, data loss prevention software, and ID-based email encryption software.
With the acquisition of Leeds in June 2010, Trend Micro started to provide cloud-based data storage and synchronization services, too. In the next decade, the company acquired names like Mobile Armor, AffirmTrust, Broadweb, IMMUNIO, TippingPoint, etc. In 2013, the company moved its headquarters to Irving, Texas, and the next year, it established a partnership with INTERPOL to provide its Threat Intelligence Service to the latter. Company also bagged a contract from Microsoft to offer Cloud App Security to Microsoft Office 365, which later was adopted by companies like Dropbox and Google Drive.
In 2015, Company got certified as a VCE validation ready as well Vblock ready solution. The company also added Deep Security to its platform. Trend Micro has also been investing in startups for quite some time now through its venture capital subsidiary named Trend Forward Capital. Few of its major investments include Veem, Muse, Mojio, and Interaxon. The company had a partnership with Telco Systems in 2017 so that to expand its operations into virtual network cybersecurity. The next year, Trend Micro partnered with Cybersecurity Tech Accord to design programs to deal with malicious attacks by cybercriminal gangs and nation-states.

The Founders

Steve Chang, along with his wife Jenny Chang and her sister Eva Chen, founded Trend Micro in 1988. He is a renowned Taiwanese businessman born in Pingtung, Taiwan, in 1954. Chang did his schooling at the National Pingtung Senior High School and attained a graduate degree from the Fu Jen Catholic University in 1977. He also went to the US to pursue a post-graduate degree in computer science from Lehigh University in 1978 and graduated in 1979.
Chang started his career at Hewlett-Packard in Taiwan, where he held the post of head of sales operations, handling operations in seven countries. After gaining enough experience, he decided to start Trend Micro in 1988. He was the first CEO of the company. Chang is a popular businessman and has won awards like “Star of Asia” by Business Week for his work.

Secureworks

Secureworks – An American-based Cybersecurity Company Providing Services To Enterprises.

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With the increasing usage and application of the internet, cybercrimes have also risen drastically. Every year we witness that some of the other large enterprises have been compromised by hackers. So, to develop a more secure system for companies to protect client’s data and any sensitive information, the demand for cybersecurity has increased. Secureworks is one such cybersecurity company that provides a wide range of products and services for large and medium-sized enterprises. Michael Pearson and Joan Wilbanks founded the company in 1998 and it is based in Atlanta, Georgia, US.

About Secureworks

Secureworks provides a cloud-native security analytics platform that was built more than 20 years ago. Unlike any other IT company of the digital era, Secureworks is exclusively focussing only on cybersecurity and combat real-world cyber threats. The company has clients that belong to the Fortune 100 list as well as medium-sized organizations. Privacy and data are crucial irrespective of the size of a company. So, Secureworks builds solutions that can be compatible for use in various types of organizations. Currently, the company is led by Michael R. Cote and it approximately has 4,000 employees across 50 countries.

Secureworks
Image source: chiefit.me

History of Secureworks

Michael Pearson and Joal Wilbanks founded Secureworks in 1998. It was established as a private company and in 2002 Michael R. Cote came on board as the President and CEO of the company. Only after a few years that it started operating, Secureworks was featured both in Inc 500 and Inc 5000 as well as Deloitte’s Fast 500. To expand the customer base of Secureworks, the company merged with LURHQ Corporation in 2006. LURHQ was a security services company based in Myrtle Beach, SC. After this merger, the new company operated under the name of Secureworks. It helped Secureworks to leverage LURHQ’s portal, Sherlock, and combine the customers onto a single security platform.

In 2009, Secureworks crossed 500 employees worldwide after acquiring Managed Security Services (MSS) from VeriSign Inc. With the help of this acquisition, the total clients of Secureworks rose to 2,600 spread across 50 different nations. Some of the countries include Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Mexico, UK, Finland, Spain, and Brazil. This acquisition was followed by buying another company called DNS limited which expanded Secureworks’ operation such that it opened additional offices in London and Edinburgh.

After a couple of years, Dell showed interest in buying Secureworks and the deal was successfully closed in February 2011. The company became a subsidiary of Dell and it was named Dell Secureworks. After this acquisition, the newly formed subsidiary expanded to New Zealand and Australia in 2013. To operate in the Australian market, the company opened a new office in Sydney. Some of the highly demanded operations here included forensic investigation, Penetration Testing, and continuous monitoring of the environment for attacks.

Recent years

Secureworks from acting as an independent private company to becoming a subsidiary of Dell created an impressive customer base and expanded very quickly. So, in 2015 the company decided to file its IPO and announced it a year later with a price of $14 a share. In the year 2016, this became the first tech IPO in the US. In the following years, the company conducted rigorous research to roll out advanced security products for threat detection and combating. This led to the release of Red Cloak Threat Detection and Response. Red Cloak is a powerful cloud-based threat detection service that reduces the time of threat detection and gets it out of the way at the earliest. This year, the company changed its business model from a direct go-to-market model to a channel focussed business model.

Michael R. Cote – CEO of Secureworks

Michael R. Cote has been serving as the CEO of Secureworks since 2002. Even after it became a subsidiary of Dell, Michael continued to serve in this position. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the company. When he joined the company at a very early stage, Secureworks barely made an annual revenue of $1 million. It was under his guidance that the company secured its IPO and generated annual revenue of $553 million last year on a GAAP basis. Michael is an alumnus of Boston College.

Imperva

Imperva- A business venture of Shlomo Kramer who is Godfather of Israeli cybersecurity

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Cybersecurity is becoming the interest of many researchers and top entrepreneurs focusing on this area. In fact, it is important to spread awareness about cybersecurity, and many firms working in this as Imperva do. It is a California based cybersecurity firm working in this field since 2000. However, the firm has been delivering excellent protection to application software and data of several enterprises. Shlomo Kramer, A. Shulman, and Mickey Boodaei set up Imperva to enable security for both data as well as applications.

About the founder of Imperva- Shlomo Kramer

A well-known entrepreneur and tech person, Shlomo Kramer has been working in the field of security for a long time. He belongs to Israel where he recognized as one of the top investors and businessmen in Information Technology. Imperva is one of the companies co-founded by Shlomo. Apart from that, he is a founder of the Checkpoint, Cato networks. These all are deal with cybersecurity. However, he also invested in several startups including Palo Alto Networks, Lacoon Mobile Security, Trusteer, Watchdox, etc.

Achievements of Shlomo

Shlomo is one of the top entrepreneurs of Israel. He helped the nation in the field of cybersecurity. For his work, several authorities and organizations praised him. In 2006, he was on the list of 20 luminaries who changed the network industry. Network World Magazine selected him in this list. As well, SC magazine named him as the CEO of the year in 2008. 7 years back, Shlomo inducted into the Infosecurity Europe Hall of Fame in 2013.

Early Life

Shlomo loves technology more than anything else, which can be seen from activities in his life. During young age, Kramer designed and sold video games. He has been familiar with mainframe and other technologies since then. At the age of 15, he worked at a Tel Aviv shop, he used to sell personal computers in there. Kramer’s passion for technology strengthen when he heard about 17 years old game developer. Thereafter, he never looked back and tried his best to do the best in this field.

Education

He has a master’s degree in computer science. For that, he went to Hebrew University Jerusalem. Also, he has a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Computer Science at Tel Aviv University. While studying, he served in the defense force of Israel. Shlomo worked in cybersecurity and intelligence team, that time, he learned analysis and decryption of data. Being a part of the Israel Defense Force’s intelligence team helped Shlomo to develop as a high-tech entrepreneur.

Early Businesses

Shlomo is recognized as Godfather of Israeli Cybersecurity, and an unstoppable entrepreneur to achieve success with each business venture. However, to reach this point has a long story. It all started in 1993 with the establishment of Checkpoint Software technologies. With this startup, he helped to the introduced first firewall in the global market. Kramer became an international leader in protecting the information on the internet.

The first company gave him huge success, and the market value of the firm raised unbelievably. Knowing the fact that how to invest money, he grabs this opportunity and left the checkpoint and raised money from this deal. Further, he used this money to invest in other businesses as well as to start his own firm.

Investments

Kramer is not only a good entrepreneur but also he is an investor. He has been working in the field of data security and helped several start-ups to explore the businesses. Shlomo is investors in the firms including Insert, SafeBreach, TopSpin Security, Splacer, Alicanto, and many more.

The backstory of Founding Imperva

After leaving the Checkpoint, he set up Imperva with Mickey and Shulman in 2002. It is set up for perimeter defenses like firewalls. However, the focus of the firm shifted toward application and data security software.

Exploring the businesses of Imperva

In 2011, Imperva jumped into the stock market and its initial public offering raised 90 million dollars. As well, the shares of the company gained up to 33% on its first day. Thereafter, the firm acquired a cloud security startup called Skyfence. Kramer always focused on investing in cloud-based security startups. Because of his optimistic views in the data security field. In fact, this acquisition helped Imperva to extend its data security through the cloud. However, Skyfence is sold for 40 million dollars to Forcepoint in 2017.

Imperva introduced a free scanner for detecting infected devices in 2016. Moreover, the firm purchased a data masking company called Camouflage in 2017.

Also Read: Gill Shwed: The Israeli Inventor & the Pioneer of the Cybersecurity

lifelock

Lifelock- Fighting Against Cybercrime Since 2005

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There are always two sides to a coin. If an innovation appears as a boon to our world, much time is not taken to manipulate it and use it otherwise. With the advent of the internet, our world has developed in terms of tech. Many companies have been founded in the IT sectors, economic growth has also increased, and communication has become easier. With the transmission of data, data storage, etc the risk of data leaking is of utmost importance. Because when a person’s data is all over the net, anyone can take advantage of it. Many companies and also government agencies provide cybersecurity. LifeLock is an American software company that provides services for preventing identity theft.

Identity theft is a category of cybercrime in which an individual tries to take financial advantage mostly through someone’s identity. Robert J. Maynard and Todd Davis founded the company in 2005 with more than 600 employees. The company’s headquarters are currently based in Arizona, United States.

Robert J. Maynard

Robert is a famous American businessman who has also co-founded Internet America, an internet service provider and several other companies.

Born in 1962, Robert served in the US Marine Corps as well as the US Reserve Army before attending college. He went to Northern Arizona University in 1985 and excelled in academics. He won many awards during this time and gained recognition. Robert founded Internet America in the late 1990s and it became a huge success. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in the early 2000s.

Todd Davis

Todd went to Baylor University and received his bachelor’s degree in business in 1990. After completing his bachelor’s he worked for many start-ups as a part of their executive management team. In 1992, he joined Dell and he also received the Dell Vision Award. In 2002, Todd founded his own company, Marketing Champions and served as the CEO.

In 2005, Todd along with Robert co-founded LifeLock and Todd served as the CEO of the company till 2016. In 2016, he stepped down from the position and became the executive vice-chairman of the Board of Directors.

Apart from being a successful businessman, Todd is also a very good speaker and a philanthropist. In 2009, he received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award and came in the list of one of the most admired CEO in 2009.

The Beginning

LifeLock works to provide services like identity authentication monitor the credit applications of the customers and protect the accounts from identity theft. The company also monitors real-time data from account openings and sends notifications or alerts in case of dual checking. When the duo founded the company they only had a seed funding of $2 million.

Investors

In the next year, the company received a funding of $5 million from Bessemer Ventures. And, additional $6 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Buyers in 2007. The company, within two years of its establishment, landed some impressive investors. Apart from these investors, others include River Street Management, Goldman Sachs Group, etc.

After receiving $25 million in Series C funding, the company raised another $40 million in Series D funding. In 2012, the company raised another $100 million from existing investors.

Also Read: Flipboard: An Application that Creates Digitalised Magazine With Curated Contents

Upside Down

Robert left the company in 2007 after he was the victim of identity theft. It is a point of huge controversy when the founder of a cyber protection company falls prey to such crimes. After this incident, maybe to save the face loss of the company, Todd made his social security number public. But, after this move, his banking system was attacked more than thirteen times.

Acquisitions and Partnerships

In December 2008, LifeLock signed an agreement with TransUnion for sending alert messages to customers in case of odd activity. LifeLock acquired ID Analytics in 2012. The company also went public in 2012 offering its initial IPO at $175 million. This year, Hilary Schneider joined LifeLock as its President.

In the next few years, LifeLock acquired Lemon Wallet for $42.6 million and Symantec for $2.3 billion.

In 2015, the company was charged $100 million as a fine for failing to secure its customer’s privacy. There have been many controversies after Robert resigned from the company. But, the company also received many awards such as Grand Steve Award for two consecutive years (2012 & 2013). LifeLock also acquired the eighth position in the list of Inc magazine in 2010.