Chief Executive Officer — Arcserve
The mathematician-turned-M&A-banker who spent two decades making the internet safer, one company at a time. Now doing it again - at scale, under pressure, with $187M at his back.
When Chris Babel walked into Arcserve in May 2024, the company was carrying visible bruises. A 2021 data loss incident tied to the StorageCraft integration had shaken MSP relationships. Partners were frustrated. The product catalog had grown unwieldy. Babel's response was not a glossy rebrand. He named the problem out loud - "the data loss was certainly a black eye for the company" - and got to work.
That instinct for candor traces back to his Northwestern years, where he graduated with Highest Distinction studying Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences and Economics. It's an unusual degree: part quantitative rigor, part behavioral science. From there, he went to Morgan Stanley's technology M&A desk, where deals live and die on your willingness to state what the numbers actually say.
VeriSign came next. By the mid-2000s, Babel was running the company's worldwide Authentication Services as SVP and General Manager, responsible for SSL certificates and managed security products sold across more than 150 countries. He orchestrated more than 20 acquisitions, expanded into EMEA and Asia, and held a stint as Chief of Staff to the CEO that gave him a rare view across the full enterprise.
Then came TrustArc - then still called TRUSTe, a browser-padlock certification player trying to find its footing in a world suddenly obsessed with GDPR and data privacy. Babel took the CEO chair in 2009 and stayed for over a decade, reshaping the company into a globally recognized privacy compliance and risk management platform. By the time he left in 2023, privacy had become a board-level concern at every large enterprise, and TrustArc was in the conversation at nearly every one of them.
Arcserve is the third act. The mission: take a 40-year-old data protection lineage, tighten the product offering, re-earn the MSP channel's loyalty, and push into the AI era with a platform capable of defending against the ransomware playbooks that are growing more sophisticated every quarter.
There's a pattern in Babel's career: he shows up at companies where trust is the product - and rebuilds it. At VeriSign, trust meant SSL certificates. At TrustArc, trust meant privacy compliance attestation. At Arcserve, trust means something more visceral: businesses need to believe their data will be there when ransomware hits, when a server dies, when a natural disaster cuts power to the datacenter.
His approach to the SMB market is notable for what it avoids. Asked about feature complexity, he's direct: "They want some, but adding too much complexity is just confusing." That philosophy drove a product simplification agenda at Arcserve that runs counter to the industry's usual tendency to bundle everything into a feature-laden platform that impresses in demos and frustrates in production.
Babel inherited a company still recovering from a 2021 data loss incident tied to the StorageCraft acquisition. His public response - "The data loss was certainly a black eye for the company" - was deliberate candor. In the channel world, MSPs have long memories and short patience for spin.
The investment that accompanied his appointment - from H.I.G. WhiteHorse and Monroe Capital - reflects a thesis: Arcserve's product and channel bones are sound, but the narrative needed a reset. Babel is writing it chapter by chapter: the MSP Lightning Program in 2025, the CRN recognitions (Storage 100 in 2025, Cloud 100 in 2026), and a steady drumbeat of international engagement including the Brazil Summit.
Arcserve isn't a startup. With roots going back 40 years and more than 235,000 customers across 150+ countries, it's one of the largest dedicated data protection companies in the world. The catalog spans on-premises backup, cloud backup, disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS), high availability, replication, and now SaaS data protection.
Its core customer is the IT director at a mid-size company - someone who doesn't have a dedicated security team but absolutely cannot afford to lose customer data to a ransomware attack. Arcserve's pitch under Babel: comprehensive protection without the enterprise-scale complexity bill.
The channel is everything. Arcserve goes to market almost entirely through value-added resellers (VARs) and managed service providers (MSPs). The Lightning Partner Program, structured in three tiers with increasing benefits and incentives, is Babel's most visible move to reconnect with partners who had grown wary under prior management.
Technologies at play include Arcserve UDP (Unified Data Protection), cloud workloads across AWS, Azure, and GCP, immutability features for ransomware-proof backups, and integrations with VMware, Hyper-V, and Kubernetes environments.
Every day, the volume and value of data grows for businesses. Data has truly become business-critical and the lifeblood of organizations, making it imperative for businesses to ensure its availability.
On joining Arcserve, May 2024We are helping companies grab data from any source and store it in a safe way for them, preferably in any location.
Interview, TechTargetBy listening to our customers and partners, we will create solutions that address their evolving needs, and empower them to secure and maximize the value of their data.
Arcserve announcement, May 2024Strengthening cyber resilience across LATAM's SMB and mid-market sectors is not just a priority - it's essential.
Arcserve Brazil Summit, São Paulo, November 2025The launch of the Arcserve Lightning Partner Program represents a significant evolution in our channel engagement framework - simplifying and enhancing our interaction with partners, offering a more transparent and profitable experience.
Lightning Partner Program launch, August 2025With this investment, we will accelerate Arcserve's development of innovative offerings and help businesses address the crucial challenge of protecting and leveraging their data in the face of increasing cyber threats and AI opportunities.
On H.I.G. WhiteHorse / Monroe Capital investment, 2024