Island expands into UK market and appoints Ashley Brinsford as Head of EMEA Sales
Island announced the expansion of its operations to Europe, with the opening of an office in Reading and the appointment of Ashley Brinsford, a highly skilled and experienced cybersecurity go-to-market leader, as Head of EMEA Sales.
Island introduced the world’s first Enterprise Browser in February 2022, eliminating the massive gaps between the consumer-focused browsers currently being utilized across the professional landscape and the increasingly complex IT and security requirements of enterprises worldwide.
With the core needs of the enterprise naturally embedded within the browser itself, Island gives organizations much-needed functionality to transform corporate security and employee productivity, while delivering the same Chromium-based experience end users expect.
“There aren’t many times in life when you get a chance to be part of an organization that is fundamentally changing the way an industry works,” said Ashley Brinsford, head of EMEA sales, Island. “Once I understood that the last mile would have a massive impact on the control, visibility and governance of customers’ entire environment, I jumped at the opportunity. Our tagline is ‘Sometimes changing one thing changes everything,’ and I can’t wait to play my part in making this happen.”
The Enterprise Browser
The Enterprise Browser enables organizations to deeply govern how users interact with all SaaS and internal web applications. Through the use of the Island Enterprise Browser, security teams can fully control last-mile actions from advanced security demands to more basic data exfiltration protections such as copy, paste, download, upload, screenshots and other activities that might expose critical data.
This opens up unprecedented opportunities across a growing number of enterprise use cases, including securing critical SaaS and internal web applications from data leakage, safe access for contractors and BYOD workers and full governance over privileged user accounts. It can also reduce virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) dependency while supporting built-in safe browsing, web filtering, web isolation, exploit prevention, smart network routing and Zero Trust access.
Solving the privacy and data challenge across Europe and the UK
The Island Enterprise Browser meets a particularly pressing need in Europe and the UK, as GDPR and local privacy laws require companies to strictly account for their data and how its handled, managed and stored. The Island Enterprise Browser assists UK and European-based companies as they navigate the regulatory landscape by providing flexible and fine-grained control of their SaaS and web-based applications, delivering an entirely new level of data governance, or so-called last-mile security and control.
“We are seeing tremendous interest from European customers and partners who want to get their hands on this game-changing technology, so we accelerated our expansion into the European market and are hitting the ground running,” said Mike Fey, co-founder and CEO, Island. “Ashley has built some of the finest cybersecurity go-to-market teams in the UK and across Europe. I am thrilled to have him join our remarkable leadership team.”
Partnering with the channel
Island, under Brinsford’s leadership, will service the large demand it has built through the channel, concentrating on channel partners who embrace innovation and new thinking to solve long-standing cybersecurity and compliance challenges. “We seek the very best, forward-thinking partners who want to push boundaries and bring their customers new ways of working. We will make our channel partners successful,” Brinsford added.
“We have been engaging with the Island team for some time now,” said Ian Morris, founder, Secrutiny. “Our interest is in their ability to achieve many fundamental security requirements simply in the browser. No complex architecture, no requirement for bumps in the wire, and all achieved in minutes. We are amazed at the use cases our customers present, and they are amazed with how fast and easy implementation is. Over the years, we’ve seen what we call leapfrog technology appear, and Island is certainly in that category. Security vendors spend billions of dollars re-inventing a better wheel. Island went straight to hover.”
Brinsford brings deep EMEA market experience
Prior to joining Island, Brinsford led all European operations for Forescout, achieving best-in-class revenue growth and net new logo acquisition. Prior to Forescout, Brinsford held a variety of sales leadership positions, including global and strategic account sales, for Symantec/Broadcom.
“We will be hiring the very best across all roles, and have already added to our ranks two key team members who were consistently the top performers in their previous roles,” Brinsford added. “We will be scaling Island EMEA fast, concentrating initially in the UK, and then expanding across Europe, where we already have significant interest. Island is a once-in-a-generation company.”