Company Sees Significant Traction in Mid-Market with 5G Core Approach to SASE
and Continues Hiring to Support Rapid Growth
News Summary:
● Exium saw 10x growth in ARR, primarily with mid-market organizations; key wins also included federal government agencies and Fortune 500; 15 major distributors signed
● Exium continues to hire and expands executive team with addition of industry veteran Michael Gallagher as President and COO
● Introduction of local SASE node to meet the requirements of Zero-Trust East-West access controls; and XDR capabilities that simplify and empower organizations to search for and protect against hidden, advanced and sophisticated threats across an enterprise’s entire digital environment.
PALO ALTO, CALIF., May 24, 2022 – Exium, the autonomous cloud security and networking platform, announced it has seen 10x growth in ARR as adoption of its Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) platform, the Exium Intelligent Cybersecurity Mesh(CyberMesh), continues to soar. Built on 5G core technology with cloud-native constructs, Exium built a F500-grade solution that continues to gain traction especially with mid-market customers for its simplicity. Recent notable wins include multiple mid-market customers, federal government agencies, a Fortune 500 company and the addition of major distributors with 15 overall in North America, EU and Asia-Pacific regions.
“Conceptually, SASE is an attractive model but when you look at what’s available in the market today, it’s often a cobbled-together solution through acquisitions that doesn’t deliver on the full promise of an integrated networking and security platform,” said Farooq Khan, CEO and Founder, Exium. “The Exium Intelligent Cybersecurity Mesh is the only SASE solution built from the ground up with cloud-native constructs based on 5G core technology designed for distributed environments that have the most stringent requirements for networking and security. CyberMesh offers a tightly integrated solution for networking and security operations that is easy-to-deploy and easy-to-use, features that are extremely attractive to the mid-market and the MSPs that serve them.”
As a result of its early success, Exium continues to hire rapidly, including expanding its executive team with the addition of industry veteran Michael Gallagher, who joins as President and COO. In this role, Gallagher will work closely with Khan on the company’s overall strategy to scale the company including customer success, business development and accelerating growth. The company today also announced the availability of its local SASE node to deliver East-West as well as North-South Network Security and a new XDR module that simplifies and empowers customers to protect against hidden, advanced and sophisticated threats in real-time. Such threats include recent stolen-credential-based attacks by the Lapsus$ cybercriminal group, the Colonial pipeline ransomware attack, and the attacks against Log4Shell and Spring4Shell vulnerabilities, all extremely critical as the attack surface has grown exponentially with expanded Work From Home/Anywhere (WFH/WFA) policies and the exploding proliferation of ransomware.
Networking and security are no longer tied to a complex, costly stack of outdated hardware that impedes growth and introduces integration risk. Exium leverages the scale of 5G networking tightly integrated with full-stack, cloud-native security to transform how security and performance are consumed and managed while reducing total cost of ownership (TCO) by more than 50%. The Exium CyberMesh SASE platform delivers the Defense-in-Depth of multiple layers of security coupled with 5G performance and cloud-native flexibility in one integrated service. The solution is ideal for mid-market customers with lean IT teams who require Fortune-500-grade security but don’t have the resources to integrate and manage disparate vendors and technologies. 5G technology differentiates the Exium platform through its standards-based, heavily tested, and globally deployed security model. This includes protecting user credentials in the hardware root of trust, robust encryption protocols, and a constantly tested trust model. Exium customers benefit from this technology and the backing of an ecosystem with the largest technology players, mobile operators, and even governments that have strong vested interests in keeping 5G highly secure.
CyberMesh combines the key capabilities of security service edge (SSE) and SD-WAN. CyberMesh is an autonomous cloud security and networking platform that protects enterprises holistically with the capabilities traditionally delivered by a complex assortment of legacy hardware products. The Exium all-in-one SaaS solution provides advanced capabilities of a firewall, VPN, secure web gateway, SD-WAN, DNS and more, which allows IT teams to deploy a secure, carrier-grade network in minutes, not months.
Currently, the five available modules include Secure Internet Access (SIA) to enable employees to securely connect to public websites and SaaS applications; Secure Private Access (SPA) to provide secure Zero Trust remote access to internal private applications; Secure SD-WAN to securely connect office or branch locations; Secure Things Access (STA) to protect IoT and OT devices with end-to-end encryption and Zero Trust authorization; and XDR to protect against zero-day and other advanced threats.
Launch of Local SASE Node
Local SASE node brings the power of 5G networking tightly integrated with full-stack, cloud-native security to the customer environment, on-premises data center, or in the cloud deployed on standard x86 hardware. It supports capabilities such as network segmentation that enables an organization to reduce cybersecurity risk by creating the network boundaries where a zero-trust security policy can enforce East-West access controls in addition to North-South access. A local SASE node also addresses the security needs of IoT and OT (Operational Technology) devices that may not support agents.
Launch of XDR Module
Today many enterprises suffer from security tool sprawl and have deployed an average of more than 30 security vendor solutions that create management challenges and lead to gaps that negatively impact the overall security posture. Moreover, many solutions offered by vendors are cobbled together after M&A activity. Meanwhile, mid-market organizations often lack the internal teams or the budget to accomplish doing this themselves.
XDR centralizes the collection of data from across the end-to-end infrastructure, including users, endpoints, devices, applications and networks, providing a single source of truth across all security functions. This enables customers to reduce alert fatigue and allows exploits to be quickly identified across data center, SaaS and cloud environments. XDR module is offered in two ways: Native XDR is tightly aligned with the SASE security tools provided by Exium, whereas Hybrid XDR leverages additional data from complementary security tools from other vendors to provide a more complete SOC platform experience.
“XDR flattens the security consumption model while overcoming challenges with traditionally siloed threat data from disparate security solutions, enabling organizations to quickly identify threats, understand what’s been impacted and quickly remediate before it cripples business operations,” said Farooq Muzaffar, CMO, Exium. “As modern enterprises are becoming more distributed, dynamic and cloud-forward, mid-market organizations are especially challenged with the volume and variety of threats. Our XDR solution simplifies networking and security operations and gives partners the ability to deliver on the promise to protect their customer networks.”
Continued Hiring and Expansion of Executive Team
“Michael Gallagher is a proven leader with a track record of strategic planning and execution success that will be invaluable as we grow. Michael is a welcome addition to our deep and diverse leadership bench, and he will help position us to deliver on our vision this year and beyond,” Khan added.
Gallagher has over 30 years of enterprise networking and wireless industry experience. Before joining Exium, he was the CEO of SpiderCloud Wireless, Inc., a scalable small cell company acquired by Corning. Gallagher also was CEO of FiberTower, Inc. and President of Flarion Technologies, a 4G company which was acquired by Qualcomm. Prior to Flarion, Gallagher held executive leadership roles with Nortel Networks, Shasta Networks (acquired by Nortel) and Bay Networks (acquired by Nortel).
“Exium is taking a revolutionary approach to networking and security for the modern digital era and delivering a simple and more cost-effective SASE solution for the mid-market,” said Michael Gallagher, COO, Exium. “I’m honored to join the company during this early rapid growth phase, and I look forward to building on the momentum as we continue to deliver on our business strategies to ensure our customers are successful.”
As the company continues to gain momentum, Exium plans to double its headcount from 40 to 80 and continues to hire in India and the US across sales, product, and engineering. For more information about career opportunities, send email to careers@exium.net.
Supporting Quotes
“The continued proliferation of advanced threats such as ransomware is a disruptive problem for organizations of all sizes. We were looking for a solution where security is built in, not bolted on. The Exium SASE solution is really attractive as it provides the most advanced identity-based access with tightly integrated networking to deliver the greatest performance and security while also improving operational efficiency and lowering costs,” said Jarek Chorazykiewicz, Director of IT Security Architecture, for a Fortune Global 500 company.
“Legacy approaches to cybersecurity are broken and lead to too many security gaps and blind spots, which ultimately translates to risk. While SASE is the right architectural approach for modern workloads and applications, no vendor in the market today fully delivers on its true promise. Taking the security advancements of 5g core technology and the flexibility of cloud-native computing, Exium delivers a solution purpose-built for the modern world with simplicity as a core tenet,” Mario Memmo, Exium Advisory Board Member and Vice President, CISO, for a Fortune 500 industrial company.
“With a crowded SASE vendor space and organizations scrambling to identify and deploy the right solution that is easy to deploy and painless for employees and customers to use, the Exium Intelligent Cybersecurity Mesh with its unique 5G core and standards-based approach truly changes the networking paradigm, simplifies operations, stops advanced threats in real-time, and enables the business to grow and scale rapidly. The Exium cloud-native solution provides an integrated security and networking solution, aligned with top-of-mind Zero Trust initiatives, and provides flexibility and adaptability as well as integration into IT and security operations functions,” Jerry Cochran, Deputy Chief Information Officer, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and former Principal Engineering Manager, Cloud + Enterprise Security Engineering at Microsoft.
“Dynamic networks are forcing the re-architecture and integration of networking and security. Our networks no longer have edges, so networking security must evolve to take a borderless approach. It’s critical that security and performance make future growth more manageable for IT. At the same time, IT is being required to demonstrate how it is shifting from a cost center to how it is contributing to the business growth. 5G is an attractive option to accomplish this,” Richard Stiennon, Chief Research Analyst, IT Harvest.
“3i Infotech shares a strategic partnership and common vision with Exium for increasing the adoption of borderless security at the edge. Exium’s unique proposition of delivering and pioneering a 5G core SASE solution that simplifies convergence of security and network on the cloud for all types of customers. Coupled with their latest XDR offerings, both native and hybrid, Exium will serve as a real differentiator for these mid-sized enterprises that are looking for a cost-effective, robust and a CISO-in-a-box solution. This collaboration will enable our customers to easily adopt a cloud-native SASE solution that is increasingly critical today for businesses globally,” said Nilesh Gupta, Chief Cloud Officer, 3i Infotech Limited.
About Exium
At Exium, we are transforming the way lean IT teams connect and secure their users, offices and devices. We’ve integrated networking and security in a cloud-delivered Zero Trust platform powered by 5G that helps lean IT teams securely connect their users, locations and devices to their applications with high performance. Our easy-to-use and simple-to-deploy platform helps IT organizations move away from legacy infrastructure and provides tools to not only embrace but to accelerate workplace transformation, security modernization, and cloud migration today — while preparing for hyper-distributed growth tomorrow. For more information, please visit https://exium.net/.
