This series of articles and the accompanying videos are part of an ongoing project to illuminate the people, products, and vendors that make up the IT security industry. The vendors paid for the video production.
While it is fairly common for the Chairman of the Board of a publicly traded company to step in to the CEO role, it is rare to see that happen at a venture backed company. Ray Rothrock of Venrock Capital has taken on the role of CEO of RedSeal Networks.
Rothrock reports that RedSeal is at 80 employees and did $20 million in revenue last year. He says the company is based on the truism “you cannot secure what you cannot see.”
RedSeal’s product is known for its network discovery capability. It then ingests data from vulnerability scans and builds a picture of every device on the network, and its vulnerability based on those scans and its exposure to attack.
RedSeal is an example of a security infrastructure play. That means big deal size ($500K plus) and long sales cycles. But it also means high valuations and customer stickiness that is appealing to large acquisitive vendors like IBM, HP, and Cisco.
While Rothrock is still wavering on the viability of the cloud for hosting critical corporate applications and data, he is moving ahead with a mobile app that will give RedSeal customers visibility into their security posture from anywhere, anytime.
Ray Rothrock is also the first venture capitalist I have interviewed. See the full video below. You will note his upbeat stance on the IT security industry.