Security Startup vArmour Hires Experienced Tech Team, Plans ‘Healthy’ Channel Program

A data security startup is arming itself with a raft of tech-industry veterans in its mission to provide the latest technology to help secure the enterprise data center with substantial help from the channel.

Mountain View, Calif.-based vArmour recently emerged from stealth mode with $42 million in its wallet from notable investment firms including Highland Capital Partners, Menlo Ventures, Citi Ventures and Allegis Capital. Now it’s added three experienced executives to help the company grow its strategy to provide distributed data security to secure virtual and cloud assets, something it plans to do with the help of VARs.

Dean Hickman-Smith, who previously held high-level posts at Juniper Networks (JNPR) and Netscreen, has joined the company as senior vice president of Field Operations. Key to his tasks will be to build a “healthy” network of channel partners to deliver vArmour’s offerings to customers worldwide, something he’s done before at Aerohive Networks, where he managed a global network of channel partners to serve the company’s 15,000 global customers, the company said in a press release.

Hickman-Smith also will work to expand adoption of vArmour’s Distributed Security System in major enterprises, service providers and government accounts globally by building the company’s own sales force.

Also new to the vArmour team is Demetrios Lazarikos, as chief information security officer (CISO). Lazarikos—known colloquially as “Laz”—already has been a key player at a couple of security startups that went on to be acquired by larger companies, including Silver Tail Systems (acquired by RSA/EMC), and ReddShell Corp. (acquired by TrustWave). He also played the CISO role at Sears Online Business Unit.

Rounding out the list of new executives is Zhiping Liu, who takes charge of threat security engineering. Liu brings six years of experience from Palo Alto Networks (PAN), where she led the engineering team of WildFire, a threat detection and protection product that’s been a key driver of that company’s growth. Like Hickman-Smith, she also is a Juniper Networks veteran, and also has held positions at Netcontinuum, Netscaler and Nextron Communication.

vArmour is claiming to bring the first distributed approach to securing the data center to keep up with the distributed nature of data-center assets, Tim Eades, vArmour’s CEO said in the release.

The company’s flagship Distributed Security System is, like a cloud architecture, a single logical software-based system with distributed parts, which in this case are multiple autonomous, distributed sensors and enforcement points that are connected by an intelligent fabric.

vArmour’s first and only distributed approach to security enables enterprises to visualize threats within minutes, giving them the ability to take immediate action and enabling them to protect 100 percent of their traffic, not just the 20 percent seen by the perimeter, according to the company. vArmour also claims it can reduce operating costs by as much as 70 percent with its solution.