What a great feeling to find a company that cuts through today’s noisy and crowded security market to address an area that keeps many folks awake at night. After embarking on a deliberate and meaningful process to better understand and validate the challenges today’s cyber security practitioners face, I came across Digital Shadows (now ReliaQuest).

Throughout my career, I’ve been fortunate to work with many security practitioners and visionaries; including security analysts, CTOs, CISOs, consultants, and small to large vendors. These folks validated my belief that precise, meaningful data will trump the coolest “next-generation” security tool that only succeeds in triggering yet more meaningless alerts.

As background, I’ve been in this industry for a decent amount of time. Along the way, I’ve had the opportunity to work for large growth companies, helped to build a contemporary security startup and play my part in its subsequent exit. As part of the journey, and as first time startup executives, we overcame challenges that were typical of early, un-proven companies. During this process, we knew one thing; we wanted to be the best in what we did and to be widely recognized as the leader in product and customer experience. We wanted to bring full fidelity to what was an opaque view of a foe’s activity. And we did it.

At Digital Shadows (now ReliaQuest), the value proposition and team characteristics are very similar. In fact, I’ve distilled five characteristics:

  1. Completing the story of the security professional. Digital Shadows (now ReliaQuest) provides practitioners with the information that was never available to them before.
  2. Unrivalled breadth and depth. The products wide range of sources is uniquely combined with in-depth expertise.
  3. Empowers organizations. The solution doesn’t make more work, but it makes analysts and their tools more effective in the battle.
  4. Led by a team of practitioners. The leaders are practitioners who understand the challenges facing the industry.
  5. The right culture. The team understands the need to do the best thing for all and strives for this.

Former practitioners in Alastair Paterson and James Chappell – two incredible individuals who really understand the pain that security analysts and CISOs face every day – have built a real gem buried in the sand. They understand that companies have left a “shadow” in their internet footprint and the risk poses by cyber threats, data leakage and reputational damage.

The team wants to be the best at what they do- for the customer, for their employees, and for the investor community.  As at my previous startup Solera Networks, where we were the first to deliver network context to binary event information seen in perimeter based solutions, Digital Shadows (now ReliaQuest) also brings a powerful new set of capabilities to view “outside the firewall” activity that poses a risk to a company’s assets and employees.

In closing, I’m very excited for our prospects ahead and look forward to what I believe will be another fantastic journey.