Sweat, Tears and Success: a glimpse in SecurityMatters' story
Time: 14:30 to 16:30
Venue: Via Sommarive 5 - Polo Ferrari 1 (Povo, TN) -Room A207
Speaker
- Prof. Sandro Etalle, Eindhoven University of Technology
Abstract
Next to achieving excellent leading research and education, a University is also expected to achieve societal and economic impact. One way of achieving this, is by means of spin-off activities.
Established in 2009 in the Netherlands as a University spin-off by an (Italian) professor and two (Italian) PhD students, SecurityMatters has recently been acquired by American ForeScout Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:FCST). for 113 Million Euro.
SecurityMatters was the pioneer of a new way of realizing network monitoring for cybersecurity that proved very successful in the Critical Infrastructure domain (Oil and Gas, Power Generation, Energy Distribution etc.). As it happens with visionary technologies, when it started SecurityMatters had no competition but also no market. At the time of the acquisition SecurityMatters counted almost 100 people, a US subsidiary, installations in five continents… and 22 competitors from around the globe.
Of course, behind the scene a successful story there is a lot of hard work, many good ideas (and even more bad ones), difficult decisions, several exciting and some very difficult moments. In this lecture, one of the founders of SecurityMatters will give a closer look of the less glamorous aspects of this successful startup story.
About the Speaker
Sandro Etalle is an entrepreneur and a full professor at the TU Eindhoven. He earned his PhD at the University of Amsterdam (1995). Before that he was co-founder of two Italian technology companies; TecLogic and ICON (www.icon.it). In 2009, Etalle founded SecurityMatters (www.secmatters.com) together with PhD students D. Bolzoni and E. Zambon. At SecurityMatters Etalle served as CEO for over 4 years and as Chairman of the Board until the exit.. SecurityMatters factually changed the way of monitoring Industrial Systems and always maintained a position of worldwide leader of its segment. At the TU Eindhoven, Etalle leads the TU/e Security and Embedded Networked Systems section, counting over 40 employees, and the Security group, which is part of it. Beyond TU/e, Etalle is visiting professor at DISI, University of Trento and and lecturer at the Bologna Business School. He has been a long time visitor at Trento and spent his sabbatical in 2006/07 at the University of Trento.
Contact: Prof. fabio.massacci [at] unitn.it (Fabio Massacci)
Image credits: ©VIN JD da Pixabay
