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Seculert Was Acquired By Radware On January 31, 2017 - An Industry Leader in Cyber Security. WHAT A RIDE!
Since completing the Radware acquisition of Seculert few days ago, I understand now more than ever how a rollercoaster ride compares to a business endeavor. It is exhilarating and frightening at times, but overall, very much worth the time I spent in line to take that ride.
Firstly, I’d like to CONGRATULATE all Seculert employees, my colleagues, as well as our investors, partners, customers, suppliers, and everyone who has engaged with us across the past 6+ years. This is a great step forward in the cyber-security industry for us and collectively, for all.
As a member of the Seculert executive team these last few years I’ve had the pleasure and honor of being a crucial participant in this ‘rollercoaster ride’ - from leading R&D, managing the Israeli office, while driving the development and vision of our product into a world-class cyber-security analytics solution (one so strong it was worthy of acquisition) - to now leading this endeavor before, and throughout, our Radware acquisition.
I respectfully state: this is the first time in my career I realized the caliber and professionalism of the people amongst whom I was working. Being asked to lead this charter has been both personally and professionally rewarding to say the least.
That said, I’d like to share this ----
The Story of Seculert is fascinating not only because of its unique technology solutions, but because of the amazing human resources involved in building our ground-breaking, award-winning, disruptive solution for the detection of cyber security threats…in a way no other company had approached.
The People of Seculert are an elite unit, a “mosaic” of talented individuals, with diverse and profound skills and expertise including data scientists, development operations, malware analysts, reverse engineers, customer success managers, big data developers, and more... These are the people who made Seculert become unique in the landscape of startups in Israel - with great companionship, trust and mutual respect.
The Vision at Seculert was driven under the premise that “attacks evading traditional defenses can best be detected by analyzing outbound and inbound network connections”. We apply machine learning to outbound and inbound log entries on secure web gateways, proxies, firewalls, next-generation firewalls, #Windows security and active directory logs, in order to detect unauthorized behavior indicative of an active attack…the type of attack traditional “perimeter” and “preventative” security was unable to detect. Along with our people, Seculert’s machine-learning technology and its supporting systems has been the star attraction of our success…and has successfully performed fully in the cloud at high scale.
Building a disruptive Product that breaks convention – and uses an “opposing” method to traditional solutions – is always fraught with concern and uncertainty.
In the last few years Seculert has triumphed (and lost a few), client opportunities based upon our unique position as a newcomer and disruptive technology in the marketplace. But above all, we learned to criticize ourselves, and better understand the root cause of any loss, as a necessity for building a #winning product.
These code names speak volumes to those involved with designing and implementing Seculert’s product suite: #Echo, #Swamp, #Sense, #Shield, #Javelin, #SVA, #LCA, and Panorama. Each has its own story, uniqueness, and above all, many years of development…and endearment.
Innovative Technology has always been the crown jewel at Seculert. Our willingness to try and fail, try again, and succeed, compensates those of us with a shared passion in experiencing new tools, and serving our collective mission… using ‘Big Data, Deep learning, Neural networks, Virtual Appliances, Map Reduce, Cloud stack’, etc., is a short list of our continued efforts to protect users & data from cyber threats.
Merger and Acquisition (M&A) activity became a reality in my life these last 6 months. Presenting in the middle of the night online, travelling abroad to meet potential acquirers at a last minute’s notice, exposing to your audience Seculert’s ‘secret sauce’ with no guarantee of reward for doing so, while answering objections to partially-informed critics and handling objections…is exhausting and exhilarating.
Then the ‘due diligence’ process becomes even more taxing! From legal negotiations to technology fundamentals – we do all this while keeping the lights on, running the company, and servicing our clients. The broadened business perspectives I have absorbed – and the understanding of the complexity involved when joining two companies - has been eye-opening to say the least.
Lastly, I am truly and eternally grateful to our investors, partners and my colleagues who trusted me along the way, and gave me the confidence to lead this process through the finish line…or at least to the end of the rollercoaster ride -- which I would gladly ride again.