ShieldX appoints Ken Levine as CEO
ShieldX announces the appointment of Ken Levine as CEO.
Ken joins ShieldX after more than 14 years as a cyber security executive. Ken was CEO of then start-up NitroSecurity, a SIEM platform, before a successful acquisition by McAfee in 2011. At McAfee, Ken was SVP and GM of the security management business unit.
After two years at McAfee, Ken became CEO of Digital Guardian. Under Ken’s leadership, Digital Guardian tripled in size, rebranded, entered adjacent markets and became a leader in the DLP and EDR markets.
Prior to Nitro, Ken was a key member of the start-up team at Cabletron Systems, where he spent 15 years as Executive Vice President of Sales, growing revenue to nearly $2 billion. Levine founded Brookline Venture Partners in 2004 to invest in early-stage technology companies.
He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. Levine has relocated from Boston to the Silicon Valley to join the team locally.
“ShieldX represents a once-in-a-career opportunity to build a significant company in a very hot space with world class technology. ShieldX has pulled together an elite roster of investors, board members, and advisors which include current and former security executives that you just can’t find at most private security companies,” said Ken Levine, ShieldX CEO.
“As CEO, I will build on the work done by Ratinder and the founding team to bring visibility, compliance and controls to next-generation data centers in a multi-cloud environment. Today, securing east-west traffic is more important than north-south traffic—and ShieldX gives the market an agentless, frictionless solution that is cost effective and easy to use.”
Ratinder Ahuja will continue as Chief R&D Officer and Chairman of the ShieldX board. In his role, Dr. Ahuja will oversee the evolution of the ShieldX platform. As Chairman, he will also guide ShieldX’s strategic direction as it continues to grow its market footprint.
“Ken has a strong history of growing companies by meeting customer needs with innovation,” said Enrique Salem, partner as well as Bain Ventures and ShieldX Board member. “The combination of Ken’s experience with Ratinder’s technical acumen will help catapult ShieldX as the leading vendor for data center security in the multi cloud.”
“On the heels of the Capitol One breach, market need for micro-segmentation is quickly accelerating,” said Ratinder Ahuja, ShieldX chief R&D officer.
“Our engineering team has developed an innovative and unique approach to solving the critical security needs of today and tomorrow—leveraging deep packet inspection.
“I think customers see the value of ShieldX in about 15 minutes—which is about the time it takes for our agentless technology to deploy. It really helps to have an unfair advantage in cyber security—and we have that with ShieldX.”
Today, the ShieldX customer base includes Alaska Airlines, IDT and Larry H. Miller.