BlackCloak
Made digital executive protection a category.
Chris Pierson and the BlackCloak team
Pioneers saw it first. The market caught up.
Every team on this page started before the security category existed. Several went on to name it, eleven have been acquired.
At scale.
Building fast.
Spectrum Security
Rebuilding detection for the age of AI.
Reach Security
Closing security gaps before AI exploits them.
Amplifier Security
Turning the workforce into a security control.
Lume Security
Making security operations run themselves.
SafeGuard Privacy
Folding every privacy law into one assessment.
Trajektory
Drawing every revenue signal into one picture.
Trails blazed.
Moved first — then bought by companies that needed what they’d built.
Evo
Brought identity to the MSP stack.
Phylum
Policed the open-source supply chain.
Polarity
Memory augmentation, for every analyst.
Flashpoint
Made the dark web an intel source.
Ionic
Took protection down to the data itself.
Tala
Moved web security to the client side.
Scytale
Wrote the workload identity standard.
Endgame
Turned endpoint defense into the hunt.
Phantom
Automated SOC before the word existed.
BrightPoint
Made threat intel a shared defense.
Immunet
Put anti-malware in the cloud first.
The record.
San Francisco, CA
New York, NY
Atlanta, GA
Boulder, CO
Orlando, FL
San Francisco, CA
New York, NY
Denver, CO
Chicago, IL
Austin, TXAcquired by Barracuda, 2026
Denver, COAcquired by Veracode, 2025
Farmington, CTAcquired by ThreatConnect, 2024
New York, NYAcquired by Audax, 2021
Atlanta, GAAcquired by Twilio, 2021
Fremont, CAAcquired by Intuit, 2021
Redwood City, CAAcquired by HPE, 2020
Arlington, VAAcquired by Elastic, 2019
Palo Alto, CAAcquired by Splunk, 2018
San Mateo, CAAcquired by ServiceNow, 2016
Palo Alto, CAAcquired by Sourcefire, 2011
Before cybersecurity had a name.
Every team on this wall moved before its market existed. So did we — and ISS is where four of us at TechOperators got our start in security.
Internet Security Systems
Chris Klaus, investor in TechOperators · Tom Noonan, general partner
Chris wrote a scanner at Georgia Tech in 1992, because nobody could see their own network. He and Tom built ISS around it in 1994 and spent the next twelve years shipping things the industry had no words for yet.
- Internet Scanner vulnerability scanning
- X‑Force vulnerability research
- RealSecure intrusion detection
- Proventia intrusion prevention
- BlackICE endpoint security
- System Scanner posture management
- Database Scanner data security