# David Goldschlag

> David Goldschlag is a cybersecurity engineer, repeat founder, and the co-founder and CEO of Aembit. After early work at the NSA and U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, where he co-invented onion routing, he moved through mobile security and zero trust, building MobileSpaces and New Edge Labs before turning to workload and AI-agent identity. His career has followed one durable question: how can a system decide what to trust without trusting the surrounding network?

- **Role:** Co-founder and CEO at Aembit
- **Organizations:** Aembit, Netskope, New Edge Labs, Pulse Secure, MobileSpaces, McAfee, Trust Digital, Trusted Edge, KeySec, USinternetworking, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, National Security Agency, Dolby Laboratories
- **Education:** Ph.D. in Computer Science, The University of Texas at Austin, B.S. in Computer Science, Wayne State University
- **Known for:** Co-invented onion routing with Paul Syverson and Michael Reed at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory; the work became a technical foundation for Tor., Received the 2020 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy Test of Time Award with his co-authors for the 1997 paper 'Anonymous Connections and Onion Routing.', Co-founded MobileSpaces, acquired by Pulse Secure in 2014.

## Career timeline

- **Early career** — Worked at the National Security Agency and later as a computer scientist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.
- **1997** — Co-authored 'Anonymous Connections and Onion Routing' with Paul Syverson and Michael Reed at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy.
- **2001-2003** — Held the CTO role at KeySec and served as an advisor to Dolby Laboratories.
- **2004-2006** — Served as senior vice president and CTO at Trusted Edge.
- **2006-2010** — Served as president and CTO of Trust Digital, which McAfee acquired in 2010.
- **2010-2011** — Served as vice president of mobile at McAfee.
- **2011-2014** — Co-founded and led MobileSpaces, a mobile enterprise security company acquired by Pulse Secure in 2014.
- **2014-2017** — Served as senior vice president of strategy and CTO at Pulse Secure.
- **2017-2019** — Co-founded and led New Edge Labs, an early zero-trust network access company acquired by Netskope in 2019.
- **2019-2021** — Served as vice president of Private Access at Netskope.
- **2021-present** — Co-founded Aembit with Kevin Sapp and serves as CEO.
- **2023** — Launched Aembit from stealth with a generally available Workload IAM service and $16.6 million in seed financing.
- **2024** — Pitched Aembit as an RSA Conference Innovation Sandbox finalist; the company finished as runner-up and later announced a $25 million Series A.

## Achievements

- Co-invented onion routing with Paul Syverson and Michael Reed at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory; the work became a technical foundation for Tor.
- Received the 2020 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy Test of Time Award with his co-authors for the 1997 paper 'Anonymous Connections and Onion Routing.'
- Co-founded MobileSpaces, acquired by Pulse Secure in 2014.
- Co-founded New Edge Labs, acquired by Netskope in 2019 and incorporated into Netskope's zero-trust platform.
- Led Aembit to runner-up in the 2024 RSA Conference Innovation Sandbox contest.
- Co-founded Aembit, which announced $16.6 million in seed financing in 2023 and a $25 million Series A in 2024.
- Named as an inventor on patents covering onion routing, hierarchical key management, mobile risk assessment, mobile network access, and conditional access.

## Latest updates

- **2026-07** — Participated in Identity Defined Security Alliance programming on non-human and agentic identities and promoted operational frameworks for AI-agent identity.
- **2026-07** — Appeared on the Identity Jedi Show to discuss shifting identity risk from human users to non-human and agentic identities.
- **2026-04** — Published an Aembit article on the security infrastructure required when enterprises deploy personal AI assistants.
- **2025-12** — Appeared on the Identity at the Center podcast to discuss non-human access, workload identity, and lessons from onion routing and DIVX.
- **2024-09** — Aembit announced a $25 million Series A led by Acrew Capital, bringing the company's reported total raised at that time to nearly $45 million.
- **2024-05** — Presented Aembit at the RSA Conference Innovation Sandbox; Aembit was named runner-up.

## Links

- Website: https://aembit.io
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidgoldschlag

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/david-goldschlag
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-08-26