Cybersecurity Startup Profile - Illumio

[pic 1]Illumio

Cybersecurity Startup Profile

MSIS 641 – INNOVATION, COMMERCIALIZATION

AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Summer 2015

June 13, 2014

Introduction

Founded in 2013 with headquarters in Sunnyvale, CA, Illumio is a company that provides security for enterprise data centers and cloud computing. Illumio was founded by Andrew Rubin and PJ Kirner and includes a veteran executive team from Cisco, McAfee, Nicira, Riverbed and VMware. They are funded by venture capitalists and have so far raised over $142 million within 27 months. Illumio will use the new funding to meet the demand for the Illumio Adaptive Security Platform (ASP), invest in R&D to drive additional platform expansion, grow its sales and marketing efforts, and fuel international expansion.

Management:

Illumio was founded by Andrew Rubin and PJ Kirner and includes a veteran executive team from Cisco, McAfee, Nicira, Riverbed and VMware. Illumio is run by founder and CEO Andrew Rubin, the former President of Cymtec. Rubin, an expert in the areas of network security and compliance management, is responsible for the overall strategy, vision, and funding of Illumio.

PJ Kirner, founder and Chief Technology Officer, is responsible for Illumio’s technology vision and platform architecture. PJ has 20 years of experience in engineering, with a focus on addressing the complexities of data centers. He was with Rubin at Cymtec as their CTO.

Ben Verghese, Vice President of Engineering, is the former VP and chief management architect at VMware. Alan Cohen, Chief Commercial Officer, is a former Cisco Systems executive and also worked at Nicira, the networking startup that was acquired by VMware. Matthew Glenn, a former VP at Intel’s McAfee security unit, is Illumio’s Vice President of Product Management. Scott Downie, Vice President of Support and Services, built Riverbed’s support organization prior to joining Illumio.

Funding

Like most startups, Illumio relied on venture capitalists for financial assistance. And because their product is radical, they managed to raise over $142 million in just a little over 2 years. Its backers include Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff, Yahoo founder Jerry Yang, Box’s CEO Aaron Levie, Andreessen Horowitz's Ben Horowitz, Joe Lonsdale, Matthew Ocko of Data Collective and Steve Herrod, an early VMware employee turned VC for General Catalyst Partners.

Their Product – Adaptive Security Platform

Their main product, Adaptive Security Platform (ASP), claims it will “Secure the 80% of data center and cloud traffic that the perimeter misses.” Illumio uses a security model that adapts to infrastructure or application changes. According to BusinessWire, Illumio’s ASP is the first-ever software platform that provides granular visibility and security for all data center and cloud computing environments. Unlike Traditional security policies that rely on network constructs like IP addresses, VLANs, and zones, ASP is based on declarative programming and computes security in real time. Big companies such as Morgan Stanley, Plantronics, Creative Artists Agency and Yahoo are turning to Illumio to help them transform their security structure. Analysts have called Illumio’s approach to perimeter-less security as unique. As the pioneer in this type of security technology, they may very well have set the standards for any company wishing to sell or provide a similar product or service.