There are few challenges more urgent for society to solve in the technology space than protecting infrastructure, applications, and data from cyberattacks given the risks breaches pose, especially as organizations continue their digital transformations, move to multi-cloud, and jump shift to work-from-home models.

We have witnessed too many stunning examples of cyberattacks that have crippled even the largest enterprises and organizations, including the Solar Winds viral breach in 2020, which investigators are still working on to understand, phishing attacks by adversaries when the world was in the middle of the worst pandemic in recent times, and state-sponsored attacks on democracy and freedom.

Six months ago, I was honored to join the DefensX team after learning about their Internet, Web, and browser end-point isolation software solution. For over three decades, I have invested in and operated companies in the cybersecurity space simply given that I was passionate about the potential of IP infrastructure before there was such a thing as the web, whether the applications made possible by the Internet were Voice over IP (VoIP), online trading platforms, payment systems, news distribution networks, content distribution networks, streaming services, cloud-native real-time communications and collaboration platforms, or mobile applications.

With the advancement of 5G infrastructure (the fastest-growing next generation of networking in history), the use of browsers for productivity is skyrocketing, as the higher speeds, more available compute both locally and in the cloud, and the financial pressure organizations are under, there will be a continued rise in the amount of data created, shared, and integrated into applications using APIs. This is progress, but with that progress comes a mission-critical obligation to protect valuable assets in increasingly granular ways.

The more I learned about DefensX’s technology and solutions, including support of remote workforces, the more passionate I became about supporting founder Osman Erkan beyond the guidance I was providing starting in 2019 in an informal way. Osman and I met in 2014 when I became Chairman of Netas, the largest systems integrator in Turkey and the region, and, as I regularly have done throughout my career, decided to mentor. Osman is a creative innovator whose vision for DefensX – to protect devices at the source – on the devices themselves – is the right way to not only secure but scale, with no upfront capex required, using a subscription model, at a cost that is at least half the cost of appliance-based Security Web Gateway (SWG) alternatives.

Born in the cloud, it because clear to me that DefensX’s breakthrough and specific feature functionality, Including provisioning, which takes just a minute for each end-point that the end-users can set up on their own (a simple and safe download of code to the device), the ease of use for security administrators and sophistication of policy-based management and monitoring won me over and today I’m excited to share that in addition to the founding team, we have added four world-class executives to an already stellar leadership team.

I respect and admire and have worked with successfully all four new team members, including Al Onove as Chief Revenue Officer, Martina (Tina) Aufiero as Chief Financial Officer, Selcan Taskiran as Chief Marketing Officer, and Mary Ivaliotis as Chief Customer Officer. 

You can read more about each of these talents in our press release (link to page). They are the best of the best – I have learned that the quality and character of leaderships are the difference between slow growth and fast growth, profit potential, and profitability, competing and winning. Ask them to connect on LinkedIn and follow DefensX’s journey as 2021 is proving to be a pivotal year, as demand for this solution accelerates and organizations desperately need to protect the “new perimeter” – the “digital perimeter” whether they are financial services, healthcare, government, education, media and entertainment, travel and hospitality, aviation and aerospace, energy, or industrial companies.

As those who work with me know, I rarely sit down at a traditional “computer” and do 99% of my work using two mobile smartphones, including editing transaction documents and contracts, negotiating with vendors, building relationships with partners, interacting with customers, and of course engaging with teams constantly. I am fluent in nearly every productivity platform, from video collaboration to voice conferencing to filling out forms and sending sensitive documents.

It is important to note in this mobile-first, and cloud-first era is that the “supercomputers” in our hands can be a blessing – and a curse. They are convenient and powerful, but they are also vulnerable and can trick users into believing they are interacting with a legitimate website that is a spoof. Within a few seconds, phishing can take place, which is not known immediately – and not known in some cases for months or even years. It just takes one quick click on a link that looks normal to open your phone and your entire company to adversaries.

Osman and his team of leaders and top-notch developers are on a mission to tame browsers and protect millions of end-points, users, organizations, and nations.

Over my career, I have learned that when a team is mission-driven when they have an opportunity to solve big problems together, truly help customers, and create substantial and sustainable enterprise value – work does not feel like work anymore. Our growing team at DefensX is bringing decades of experience, success, and work ethics to this exciting start-up, and I am so proud to be part of this smart, creative, and fun to work with a group of colleagues – and friends.