Security industry veteran Shawn O’Brien will lead the company’s global sales and field operations during a period of significant growth and transformation for the xIoT security leader
Phosphorus, the leading provider of proactive and full-scope breach prevention for the xTended Internet of Things (xIoT), announced the appointment of security industry veteran Shawn O’Brien to the position of Chief Revenue Officer. O’Brien will oversee Phosphorus’s global sales operations, including Sales Engineering, Channel and Alliance Development, and Customer Success. He joins the company at a time of accelerated sales and channel growth, as well as increased demand for its award-winning Unified xIoT Security Management Platform.
With three decades of executive and sales development experience in the security and IT industries, O’Brien will play a critical role in Phosphorus’s continued growth and expansion. As CRO, O’Brien will lead the company’s global sales and business development strategy as it sees increased demand by Fortune 500 companies in the energy, smart manufacturing, healthcare, biotech-pharmaceutical, retail, and financial sectors. Prior to joining Phosphorus, O’Brien served as the North America Vice President of Sales for Nozomi Networks, Americas Vice President – Enterprise Sales for Recorded Future, Americas Vice President for Netwitness Sales at RSA Security, and more.
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“Shawn is a well-respected industry leader who’s played an important role in developing the GTM strategies for several prominent security brands, and we are honored to have him as part of our senior leadership team,” said Chris Rouland, CEO of Phosphorus. “We are entering an exciting time in our company, as enterprises are eager to address their xIoT attack surface to proactively protect their networks and smart devices. Over the next year, we will be scaling our operations and GTM execution to enable more major enterprises to move from detection to prevention by discovering, assessing, hardening, remediating, and monitoring their non-IT assets to protect against critical new threats. We anticipate major growth across multiple industry verticals as we deliver the industry’s only unified solution for xIoT breach prevention and security management.”
O’Brien’s appointment marks an important next step for Phosphorus, as the company finalizes its executive team in preparation for accelerated growth in H2 2023. Over the last year, Phosphorus has appointed several leading industry executives, as it expands its position as the market-defining solution for enterprise xIoT. These top executive hires include: John Vecchi, Chief Marketing Officer (Check Point, Blue Coat, McAfee); Martin LeRoy, Chief Financial Officer (SailPoint, Intel); Sonu Shankar, Vice President of Product Management (Arctic Wolf, Cisco, Box); Mike Huckaby, Vice President, Sales Engineering (Bugcrowd, RSA Security), Vlad Melnik, Vice President of Strategic Alliances (Splunk, Accenture); Drew Mullen, Vice President, Revenue Operations (Cylance, RSA Security); and Joe Costantini, Vice President of Engineering (Coinbase, Bastille).
Unique Market Position Puts Company on Track for Unicorn Status
While recession fears have led to cutbacks in some areas of corporate IT spending, the enterprise xIoT market remains remarkably strong. Recent forecasts predict a more than $2 trillion market for enterprise IoT by 2032. This massive increase in connected device integrations in corporate and industrial facilities is driving enormous demand for new services, as business networks take on additional cyber risks that cannot be addressed with traditional security solutions.
Phosphorus holds a unique position in this fast-growing market and, as the only unified xIoT breach prevention platform, it is poised to become the first xIoT security unicorn. The company’s award-winning platform is the only enterprise security solution capable of providing proactive breach prevention and attack surface management – including Discovery and Assessment, Hardening and Remediation, and Detection and Response – across the full range of IoT, OT, IoMT, and IIoT devices, including both new and legacy technologies.
Accelerated Growth and Key Product Milestones Position the Company for a Monumental Year
Since bringing its game-changing platform to market, Phosphorus has expanded all areas of its xIoT security business to meet customer demand, enter new markets, and further enhance the security platform’s vast competitive edge.
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Among the highlights:
Product & Research Milestones:
- The Phosphorus Unified xIoT Security Management Platform earned several industry awards and recognitions, including the SINET16 Innovator Award, The Information’s “50 Most Promising Startups,” Finalist for Cyber Defense Magazine’s Baby Black Unicorn award, CRN’s 25 Hottest Edge Security Company 2022, and CRN’s 10 Coolest IoT Security Company of 2023.
- The xIoT Security Platform outperformed all other vendors across key xIoT security categories, including discovery speed, risk assessment, proactive hardening/patching, password rotation, and stateful drift detection and monitoring.
- Launched critical new features including enhanced capabilities for configuration management, device hardening, and the ability to detect banned xIoT devices, following FCC ban of multiple Chinese xIoT device manufacturers.
- Launched a new global research division, Phosphorus Labs.
- Released the first “xIoT Threat & Trend Report,” providing advanced data analysis of security weaknesses in deployed enterprise xIoT devices.
- Debuted the industry’s first Intelligent Active Discovery solution and first Mobile xIoT Security Lab.
Business Milestones:
- Accelerated growth in 2022 with healthy gross margin business by gaining leading enterprise customers in multiple industry verticals.
- Appointed Art Coviello Jr., the former President and CEO of RSA Security, to serve as Chairman of the Board of Directors.
- Raised a landmark $38 million Series A in February 2022, one of the largest funding rounds for a cybersecurity or IoT company.
- Premiered new leading podcast series, “The IoT Security Podcast,” across Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Pandora and more.
- Opened a new state-of-the-art corporate headquarters and research lab in downtown Nashville.
Partner and Alliance Milestones:
- Expanded North America sales channels through strategic partnerships with leading VARs, including: Alchemy Technology Group, Redapt, Mission Critical Systems, Fulcrum Technology Solutions, Dewpoint, and EverSec Group.
- Entered new global markets through key partnerships with top distributors, including: Concept Data, for the European Union; Tindo, for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN); and CyberKnight Technologies, for the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region.
- Expanded an ever-growing partner ecosystem, focusing on strategic GSI/RSI alliances, as well as technical partnerships with leading NGFW and EDR vendors.
Phosphorus is poised for even stronger growth in 2023 with several groundbreaking updates to its Unified xIoT Security Management Platform that will be announced in the coming months. Phosphorus will continue to work with its strategic partners to drive xIoT security adoption among the world’s leading companies and industries.