From the Desk of the CEO: Looking Back to Look Forward

With our employee all-hands and sales kickoff event just behind us and RSAC coming in early March, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on what I’ve seen, what I’m thankful for in my time here at Kenna, and what I look forward to in the coming year.

In October of 2014, I started my journey at Kenna Security. At the time we were called Risk I/O, and had only about a dozen employees. We took the original vision of our founders and charted a path focused on addressing a pressing problem for all enterprises—how to take millions of vulnerabilities and findings, understand risk and galvanize the entire company to focus on what matters. We are very proud of what we have accomplished in just four years.

The Importance of Culture

Technology and innovation are wonderful, necessary foundations, but as you grow it is the people that continue to impact the most change. I am so exceedingly proud to work at a company and with a group of people who continue to make me proud each and every day. We work hard to maintain a culture that attracts the best to join our “family.” Last year, for the first time, we sat down and codified the tentpoles of our company culture and I’m happy to share them with you:

• Customers: we strive to make the complex simple, to continuously improve and to drive results.  
• Trust: we are problem-solvers who take ownership of our areas and yet continue to think like a team.
• Character: we value integrity, open and honest communication and bold thinkers.

In the past year we were fortunate enough to be able to significantly grow the number of people who will add to and enhance the Kenna team. In particular, we took the opportunity to add some much-needed department heads for finance, human resources, partner, research and sales. I look forward to working with all of the new team members to continue to drive Kenna Security forward and help our customers thrive and grow as they benefit from their use of the Kenna Security Platform.

Continued Industry Recognition

2018 was a landmark year for us in terms of third-party validation for our unique approach in the market. I’ve already shared with you in earlier blogs the news about most of these awards—eight in total—including recognition as one of the fast growing companies in the Deloitte Technology Fast 500.

Among a remarkable list of awards it was particularly gratifying to me that we were selected as one of Gartner’s 2018 Cool Vendors in the Cool Vendor in Security Operations Report*—such recognition doesn’t come along every day.

Key Expansion of Our Platform

Our ability to add value for our customers, further differentiate in the market, and continue our growth requires that we expand the use cases of our platform. We released the Application Risk Module in 2018, which was a critical milestone from an internal perspective, for our engineering team, and, for our ability to help our customers prioritize vulnerabilities across their full stack. In addition, we enhanced our offerings with new product features including the industry’s first vulnerability prediction and peer benchmarking capabilities. We will only continue to expand on our existing product portfolio in the coming years, so look for more to come.

Shared Learning: Research With the Cyentia Institute

At Kenna we embrace continuous learning, and this past year we opened up some of what we’ve learned to the rest of the world by means of our ongoing partnership with the Cyentia Institute. In partnership with them, we researched and then reported on the state of the vulnerability landscape. This is, and will continue to be, an ongoing project, and started early 2018 with the first, more theoretical report with the latest installment of research based on real-life enterprise data in January. If you’ve not had a chance to take a look at what we’ve found to date, I recommend doing so—it is fascinating.

See What’s Next for Kenna Security at RSAC

As one of the biggest security events of the year the RSA Conference is a great place to mix, mingle and learn about the latest advances in our space. This year, on Tuesday, March 5th, join me at the brand-new Virgin Hotel Rooftop Lounge to learn more on what is in store for Kenna. We will be hosting a great event with libations and live entertainment, and I hope you can join.

Looking back at the past year and looking forward to RSAC and 2019, I am grateful for the work that my team, including the extended team of customers and partners, puts in each and every day and am honored to be part of this company and the journey we have embarked upon together. I look forward to seeing what we can achieve together.

*Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.