This marks my first week as board chairman at FireEye, and I’m tremendously excited to be joining the company. FireEye has talented people and brilliant solutions that meet a critical need in the market, and has been growing rapidly as a result. With these fundamental assets and upcoming innovations, the prospects as we move forward are very promising.
You only need to look at the news of the past week or two to see some vivid illustrations of the fact that the security landscape has changed, and continues to change, dramatically. All around the world, we’re seeing well-financed criminal organizations and nation-states growing increasingly ambitious, and increasingly capable. As details of Flame continue to surface, we find yet another example of a targeted, persistent, and highly sophisticated attack that remains undetected until well after much damage has been done.
When you look at the market statistics and the high profile list of enterprises and government agencies victimized, it is clear no organization is immune from these attacks. Fundamentally, this is because most organizations are employing security models that haven’t changed in over 15 years. That’s why it’s growing increasingly obvious to many in the industry that a new model of IT security is needed—one that offers real-time, proactive, and signature-less protection capabilities. One that stops this next generation of cyber attacks. FireEye is the only company to deliver this kind of solution, which puts us in a strong position.
FireEye has built revolutionary technology that leaps beyond static analysis to illuminate this next generation of cyber attack activities using a variety of techniques, like virtual machine analysis. Our appliances are deployed in enterprises and government agencies across the globe to stop what firewalls, IPS, AV, and other security gateways have missed. Given this unique position, we will continue to share our findings on the next-generation threats that routinely bypass signature-, reputation- and basic behavior-based technologies, the $20B spent on IT defenses each year.
It is a great pleasure to start working with Ashar Aziz, founder, CEO, and CTO of FireEye, and the rest of the company’s senior leadership and staff as we look to build on this company’s abundant assets. We’re poised to make a big difference in the security battles being waged, and it’s an honor to be helping in that mission.
About Dave DeWalt
Dave DeWalt has more than 25 years of experience building innovative, industry-leading technology companies. He has a strong record of driving revenue growth at startups, midsize, and large companies, and has helped create billions of dollars in shareholder value through a series of CEO-led industry changing major acquisitions. He has been named one of the top five CEOs of publicly traded software companies by “Institutional Investor” magazine. Dave has held executive positions at such notable technology companies such as Oracle, EMC, Documentum, Intel, McAfee, Segue Software, and Quest Software. A recognized authority on cybersecurity, he appears regularly on nationally televised news programs, has spoken numerous times at the World Economic Forum in Davos, and serves as an advisor to the critical government agencies among others. In May 2011, he was appointed by President Barack Obama to reside on the National Security and Technology Advisory Council (NSTAC). Dave received his bachelor’s degree in computer science (CSEE) from the University of Delaware, where he was NCAA Division I All-American and the first wrestler inducted into the University of Delaware Athletics Hall of Fame.
