New Claroty CEO Yaniv Vardi To Expand Reach Of OT Security
Yaniv Vardi’s appointment comes just nine months after industrial cybersecurity vendor Claroty named Thorsten Freitag as its new CEO, who has since left the company.
Industrial space veteran Yaniv Vardi wants to bring Claroty’s entire portfolio to more customers in emerging verticals like transportation and food and beverage.
The New York City-based industrial cybersecurity vendor tapped former Panoramic Power CEO Vardi as their next top executive to drive adoption of Claroty’s OT, industrial IoT and remote access offerings. Vardi’s appointment comes just nine months after Claroty named Thorsten Freitag as its new CEO, who has since left the company.
“The board is really looking to create significant growth here, and really invest in becoming a market leader,” said Vardi, who took over as Claroty’s CEO Monday. “We’re on the right path to becoming the market leader in providing security to the OT space.”
[Related: New Claroty CEO Thorsten Freitag To Drive IT, OT Security Convergence]
Claroty has historically been most focused on critical infrastructure verticals such as oil and gas, energy, utilities and automotive, and the company has the chance to expand more in these verticals, according to Vardi. At the same time, Vardi said Claroty can build on early successes in the transportation and food and beverage verticals said there’s so much more the company can do in those nascent sectors.
The company also needs to do a better job of telling its story around being a one-stop shop for protection against IT, OT, industrial IoT and remote access-based threats, Vardi said. In industrial sectors like automotive, Vardi said businesses tend to be largely protected on the IT side since that’s where the CISO is most knowledgeable but are usually fairly exposed on the OT side.
The opportunity is growing every day to provide OT security as different types of malware and ransomware spread across the operational space in every country and vertical, according to Vardi. C-level executives and board directors are now asking the right questions around what security actions are being taken on the operations side, which Vardi said is driving firms to look for additional solutions.
“The market is getting more educated here on the need for operational security,” Vardi said.
But even if the operational side of the equation such as switches are protected, Vardi said Industrial IoT could still be exposed such as sensors or devices that are connected without any protection. Vardi said Claroty hopes to improve at exposing partners to its product roadmap as well as the company’s full slate of offerings so that the channel can increase its stickiness and wallet share with existing customers.
Vardi most recently spent 4.5 years as a managing director at distributed energy provider Centrica Business Solutions, International. Prior to that, Vardi served as CEO for four years at Israeli energy management provider Panoramic Power and more than a decade at quality management software provider Sparta Systems Europe, where he rose to the rank of managing director.
Claroty has made great strides in the OT space and is dominating the food and beverage market, according to Craig Duckworth, CEO of St. Charles, Mo.-based solution provider Velta Technology. Duckworth said he’d like to see Claroty look at other segments they’re not as strong in such as pharmaceuticals and manufacturing and strengthen their product for those specific markets.
Specifically, Duckworth said he’d like to see Claroty pay close attention to industry-specific guidelines and criteria and tailor their product to meet the regulatory specifications of each particular industry. And from a partnership standpoint, Duckworth said Claroty could improve at communicating and sharing leads with the channel to foster growth for solution providers of all different sizes.
“We decided on Claroty [two years ago] because we felt they would be No. 1 or No. 2 in the industrial intrusion market, and today, that is most certainly the case,” Duckworth said.