RedSeal Taps Ex-Symantec Executive Bryan Barney As New CEO

“I’m thrilled to have Bryan aboard, as he’s something of a legend across the cybersecurity industry. I’m impressed not just with his track record, but also his curiosity and data-based decision-making,” says RedSeal Executive Chairman Ray Rothrock.

RedSeal has hired the former head of Symantec’s Enterprise Security Group to drive adoption of the company’s platform among government agencies and Global 2000 companies.

The San Jose, Calif.-based network monitoring and risk scoring platform has brought in cybersecurity veteran Bryan Barney to be its new CEO. Barney is replacing Ray Rothrock, who had led RedSeal since 2014 and will now transition into the role of executive chairman.

“I’m thrilled to have Bryan aboard, as he’s something of a legend across the cybersecurity industry,” Rothrock said in a statement. “I’m impressed not just with his track record, but also his curiosity and data-based decision-making.”

[Related: 5 Things To Know About Dell’s $2.08 Billion Plan To Sell RSA Security]

Barney most recently ran Symantec’s Enterprise Security Group from July 2017 to September 2019, where he oversaw the firm’s endpoint security, endpoint detection and response, data loss prevention, email security, IoT and cloud workload protection tools, which generated a combined $1.2 billion in annual bookings. He led a team of 1,300 engineers and product managers across 10 different sites.

He left Symantec just a month after Broadcom announced plans to acquire the company’s Enterprise Security business for $10.7 billion. RedSeal didn’t immediately make Barney available for additional comment.

Before joining Symantec, Barney was senior vice president and general manager of Sophos’s $340 million network security business from May 2014 to December 2016. Barney helped the company grow its network security business by 25 percent on a year-over-year basis and was part of the leadership team that brought Sophos to the public market on the London Stock Exchange.

Barney first made his mark in the cybersecurity industry at McAfee, which he joined in November 2001 and rose up the ranks to become executive vice president of product development and chief product officer. In that role, Barney spent six years running the product development unit for McAfee’s consumer, corporate and network teams, and also oversaw global product research and development.

“With the rapid adoption of public cloud, hybrid cloud, and multi-cloud environments, network security is becoming even more complex,” Barney said in a statement. “The need for RedSeal’s technology is both urgent and universal. This is truly an exciting opportunity.”

Barney said RedSeal’s sophisticated network monitoring technology allows customers to understand the fundamentals of their network, quickly identify misconfigurations and prioritize security vulnerabilities. The company’s technology gives security and management teams a holistic understanding of an organization’s cyber risks across physical, cloud, and virtual networks as well as remote endpoints.

Private equity firm Symphony Technology Group (STG) acquired a majority stake in RedSeal in April 2019 for a reported $100 million, according to Momentum Cyber. STG had been around since 2002 investing in software, data and analytics leaders in the midmarket, but shied away from the cybersecurity space until its acquisition of RedSeal.

RedSeal today employs 178 people and had raised just over $90 million prior to its acquisition by STG, according to LinkedIn and Crunchbase. The company has increased its sales and operations headcount by 14 percent and 6 percent, respectively, over the past year, while decreasing its IT headcount by 19 percent over the same timeframe, according to LinkedIn.

Ten months after buying RedSeal, STG agreed to purchase RSA Security from Dell Technologies for $2.08 billion, acquiring both the company’s four product lines as well as the industry-leading RSA Conference. RSA is much larger than RedSeal, employing nearly 3,100 people around the world commanding a valuation from STG that was nearly 21 times bigger than RedSeal’s, according to LinkedIn.