Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Ray Rothrock, CEO of RedSeal (Part 3)

Ray Rothrock: We have three factors that determine a number. The number is like a Personal Credit Score. It ranges from 350 to 850. We crunch those numbers with our proprietary algorithms, and we give you a metric on the piece of the network that you’re interested in. There are three things that go into that. Number one, is that the configuration files should be in good shape. There are best practices. There are all kinds of things we can look at the equipment to say, “You’ve got this properly configured.” The other thing is the vulnerabilities. Do you have hosts on your network that are at risk of being attacked based on where they sit on the network? The third is what you don’t know. This is what gets everybody’s interest.

When our software runs, we always find equipment, routes, and other pieces of the network that nobody knew existed. They were designed by somebody years ago and were long forgotten. We’ll show routes. It’s what you don’t know that will hurt you. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Ray Rothrock, CEO of RedSeal (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: So your investment thesis today, so to speak, is the timing?

Ray Rothrock: Absolutely. It’s the same product we invented 10 years ago. We have 200 customers. We’ve had sales of about $110 million in the past 10 full years. It’s picking up because of the value that we bring.

Sramana Mitra: Going back to my earlier question, what does the competitive landscape look like? If the timing is now right, is the market crawling with competitors?

Ray Rothrock: Yes, there is this company called SkyBoss, which is the same age and investment profile as us. There are a number of other companies that are moving into our space that have been mostly perimeter security companies and firewall management companies. They realized that having end-to-end understanding is very important. They’re encroaching on our domain. Business across all of these companies is picking up steam and speed in terms of growth. There are new investments out there for sure. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Ray Rothrock, CEO of RedSeal (Part 1)

Ray Rothrock had a successful career in venture capital for 25 years, as a General Partner at Venrock.

He was an active investor in Cyber Security. After retiring from Venture Capital, he now has taken the helm of ReedSeal, a 10-year old security company. This discussion focuses on network analytics within the Cyber Security space.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with introducing our audience to yourself as well as to RedSeal.

Ray Rothrock: I’m the CEO of RedSeal. I was also the original investor of the company in 2004. As a venture capitalist for 25 years, I’ve invested in over 15 cyber security companies. This is one of them. I retired from venture and a couple of years ago the company was flat-lining out. The Board got concerned and asked me to look at it. I’ve been here for the last 18 months. RedSeal is in an emerging space called security analytics. The company’s enterprise software technology addresses large organizations and their networks. We basically understand and model the network to give you full visualization and metrics. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Mike Potts, CEO of Lancope (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: If you were starting a company today, what kind of open problems would you be leaning towards?

Mike Potts: I think the market is starving for some automation and folks that can bring it in. In other words, whatever can be done to take security intelligence and make that more predictive with a high degree of accuracy that can quickly discern good from bad. Even in service firms, there are only so many people who can handle some of these complex challenges. We inevitably have more and more managed service providers. I think there’s a great focus and opportunity in trying to deliver this technology that can benefit masses versus a user at a time. I think predictive analytics and also cloud-based service offerings are areas that I look at as an investor in a couple of different venture funds.

Sramana Mitra: Anything else that you want to share? >>>

Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Mike Potts, CEO of Lancope (Part 4)

Mike Potts: Going back to the insider threats, we’re seeing more investments going into the interior of the network to understand the nature of the insider attack. More than 50% of the attacks are beginning to emulate from the inside whether that is the user on the network who is maliciously or unknowingly doing things that he or she shouldn’t be doing, or the adversary actually logging on to your network because they have compromised credentials. That’s happening many times. Take Target for example. It was a result of a contractor who compromised their credentials.

We’re seeing a more important thrust of protecting the inner core of the network because that’s where the valuable data exists. It used be credit cards, but credit cards have short shelf lives and can be replaced. The information now that these criminals have access to and are seeking are the healthcare files, social security numbers, and personal information that have a much longer shelf life and leads to all types of extortion from a >>>

Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Mike Potts, CEO of Lancope (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Take one of your customers and take us through how this all works. What points do you start monitoring? What kinds of things do you find? Walk us through a use case.

Mike Potts: We can take HP as an example. We got a large use case on our site as well as theirs. Despite the fact that they have a SIM technology which is ArcSight or Tipping Point, they are still not able to get complete contextual visibility into the entire network. We’re turning their switches and routers into sensors and populating that data into our engine to give them visibility as to what’s transversing the network. We’re collecting this metadata off of switches and routers in hundreds of thousands of flows per second. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Mike Potts, CEO of Lancope (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Can you help put some of the other players and the ecosystem map in view a bit? I’m still looking for the ecosystem map.

Mike Potts: Let me shed a little bit of light on what we’re doing. We really are the lights of the network using the electricity, which is the metadata coming off of switches, routers, and firewalls. What we’re able to do is provide instant visibility and also be able to detect when behavior patterns and network traffic begins to change. We’re providing a different level of security than what other providers have been able to provide up to this point. It plays into this management adage that unless you can measure, you can’t manage it. In security, if you can’t see it, you can’t secure it. We’re providing the eyes and ears to the network. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cyber Security: Mike Potts, CEO of Lancope (Part 1)

Atlanta, Georgia has become a mini hub for Cyber Security companies. Lancope is part of that ecosystem. This conversation is an exploration of the network security side of things.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to Lancope.

Mike Potts: I’m the President and CEO of Lancope. I’m a 20-year-industry veteran who has been in the software security since the evolution of mainframe security technology, which was where I started my career with a company called MSA. Then, I ran a company called Jacada, which we took public. We helped interface to the web legacy applications. I, most recently, ran a software security company called AirDefense, which was acquired by Motorola. That’s a quick recap of my experience in the industry, which leads us to Lancope. We are a network security company that provides network visibility and security intelligence to some 750 global customers at present. >>>