Obsidian Security in Newport Beach has added a new chief revenue officer, as the company ramps up its cyber-protection business after receiving a large financing round earlier this year.
The closely guarded cybersecurity company announced the appointment of the industry veteran Reena Choudhry on September 13.
Obsidian Security has moved further into the top ranks of Orange County’s growing cyber-protection industry with a $90 million financing round led by the prominent Silicon Valley investment firm. Menlo Ventures announced in April.
The software maker, whose founders include two former executives of the onetime Irvine-based cybersecurity firm Cylance Inc.and also counts relationships with well-known security firms Carbon Blackhas raised a total of $119.5 million since its founding in 2017.
Choudhry told the Business Journal on September 16 that he sees a bigger shift to the cloud “in the near term” in the growth of the software as a service (SaaS) industry, a sector that Obsidian’s technology is focused on protecting.
“This problem is going to get bigger and bigger,” he said of SaaS security issues.
Various Fortune 500 companies trust Obsidian Security to secure SaaS apps, such as Salesforce, GitHub, Service Today, work day and Atlassian.
The company hasn’t disclosed its revenue numbers yet, but said revenue showed a nearly four-fold increase last year, and the CEO Hasan Imam He told the Business Journal in April that he expects to triple growth by 2022.
20+ Years
Choudhry brings more than 20 years of experience in business sales leadership and partner-driven go-to-market strategies to his post.
He most recently served as chief revenue officer at Excellent Security in San Francisco and prior to that, served as vice president of North American Sales for the Santa Clara-based Shape Security (acquired by F5), where he worked alongside Obsidian leader Imam.
Prior to his posts at various Silicon Valley startups, Choudhry spent several years at Cisco in various senior roles.
“With Reena’s exceptional people-centric sales leadership and revenue growth experience across various verticals, she brings a wealth of knowledge that will enable us to continue to value our customers,” Imam said in the announcement on last month of his appointment.
Choudhry is the second person to hold the Obsidian Security CRO post. Bob Kruse was the company’s CRO from November 2019 to August 2020. He is now the CEO and co-founder at Revelstoke Security in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Boosting Headcount
Choudhry, who is based in New York, said “we’re going to scale our sales. I’m strengthening my team.”
“Acquisition is a key focus area.”
Obsidian Security now has 100 employees company-wide and growing. It has an office in Redwood City in Silicon Valley, in addition to its base in Newport Center.
The privately held company had about 35 job vacancies posted on its website as of Sept. 21, including account executive, data analyst and detection engineer positions.
Company officials told the Business Journal in April that it planned to double that number this year.
Fortune 500 Focus
Along with Menlo Ventures, the other investors in the Series C round announced in April are Norwest Venture Partners and IVPwith participation from existing investors Greylock, wings and GV (formerly Google Ventures).
Obsidian said the new funds will help the company meet the growing demand for corporate cybersecurity, enabling companies to maintain what the tech world is calling an efficient “SaaS Security and management posture.”
The company counts more than 100 corporate customers. Snowflake, Coinbase and BigCommerce are three customers who work with Obsidian.
Obsidian helps security and IT operations bridge the security and compliance gaps created when lines of business implement SaaS applications to run business-critical functions such as finance, payroll, HR, sales and operations.
“The use of tools like Salesforce, Workday, Github, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, ServiceNow and Zoom has only accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic in organizations of more than 1,000 employees using more than 150 SaaS applications on average,” Obsidian said in announcing its latest financing on April 14.
Imam said such SaaS applications produce some data that is visible to the outside world that the application owner does not want.
Obsidian says it fills the gap left by traditional security solutions by analyzing data within and across applications to reduce the chances of workers gaining overly broad access, while also preventing exposing sensitive data and detecting compromised accounts and insider threats.
“Existing solutions being deployed to protect critical SaaS applications are inadequate,” Choudhry said at the time of his hiring, noting Obsidian’s potential to become an industry leader.
2017 Established
The company was founded in 2017.
Co-founder and former executive of Cylance Glenn Chisholm is chairman and chief product officer of Obsidian Security, while another Cylance veteran and co-founder of Obsidian, Matt Wolffis chief scientist.
“I’m betting on the team here at Obsidian,” Choudhry said of his decision to join the company.
As SaaS applications proliferate, businesses face the vexing question of how to protect data and information as applications proliferate.
“The SaaS application gives someone certain privileges, and that creates a risk for the business,” Imam told the Business Journal earlier this year.
Local Cluster
OC’s cybersecurity industry is large and growing.
Other local cybersecurity companies include Netwrix and SecureAuthboth in Irvine, while the University of California, Irvineis home to the nationally recognized Cybersecurity Policy and Research Institute.
Austin, Texas-based Crowdstrike Holdings Inc. (Nasdaq: CRWD) started in Irvine in 2011 and is currently valued at nearly $37 billion. It even has a base of operations in the city.
resident of Newport Beach Stuart McClurea co-founder of Cylance, this summer joined the Santa Clara-based cybersecurity company ShiftLeft as chief executive.
Toasts, Mountains and Community
New Obsidian Security Chief Revenue Officer Reena Choudhry brings some unique personal characteristics to work.
He is a certified sommelier, ready to select the most suitable wine.
He also has climbing in his blood and plans to trek to the base camp of Mount Everest this fall.
She’s also part of a unique minority—24%, according to industry data—of women in the cybersecurity space and uses her proven track record to continue to pave the way for others who aspire to follow a similar career path in tech .
She said she is passionate about building a vibrant community of women in cybersecurity and plans to continue to engage with industry leaders, and help drive growth and opportunities for Obsidian and its partners.
“My hope is to be the catalyst in bringing together a vibrant community of women leaders in cybersecurity.”
—Kevin Costelloe