The Boston company that turned network security into a cloud - and wants to retire your VPN, proxy box and VDI all at once.
iboss, the Zero Trust SASE platform built by twin brothers Paul and Peter Martini - photographed here as its corporate mark, the identity behind 100 billion secured transactions a day.
For most of computing history, network security lived in a box. A proxy appliance sat in a wiring closet, and every request an employee made was hauled back to headquarters to be inspected before it reached the internet. iboss was built on a bet that this arrangement was already obsolete. Founded in 2003 by twin brothers Paul and Peter Martini, the company rebuilt those security functions as a cloud service that sits close to the user instead of the building.
The product category now has a name - Secure Access Service Edge, or SASE - but iboss was moving traffic to the cloud before the acronym existed. Its platform consolidates the tools that used to be separate appliances and licenses: a secure web gateway, Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), a cloud access security broker (CASB), data loss prevention (DLP) and firewalling. All of it runs as one subscription service, delivered from a globally distributed, containerized cloud that iboss built itself rather than renting.
The organizing principle is Zero Trust: the network trusts no connection by default, regardless of where it originates. Access is granted based on identity and context, continuously, in line with the U.S. government's NIST 800-207 framework. In practice, that means an iboss customer can let employees work from a coffee shop, a branch office or a home network without routing everything through a VPN concentrator - and without assuming that being "inside" the network makes anyone safe.
“The zero trust cloud security market reached $21.43 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow to $54.37 billion by 2030.”
iboss - a name derived from "internet boss" - was founded by identical twin brothers. Paul Martini serves as CEO and CTO; his brother Peter is President. Before iboss, Paul architected security and technology systems for clients including the U.S. Navy and Hewlett Packard, and that engineering bent still defines the company.
Paul Martini holds more than 230 issued and pending patents in cloud cybersecurity, and the decision to build a home-grown, containerized cloud rather than assemble one from third-party parts is the technical choice everything else rests on. It is also what lets iboss claim scale figures - 100 billion transactions processed and nearly 4 billion malware threats blocked every day - that would be hard to reach on borrowed infrastructure.
Recognition has followed. Martini received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award, was named 2023 CyberSecurity Company CEO of the Year in the CyberSecurity Breakthrough Awards, and has appeared on Goldman Sachs' list of 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs.
Consolidates SWG, ZTNA, CASB, DLP, firewall and browser isolation into a single cloud service with continuous, identity-based access.
Cloud-delivered proxy with SSL inspection, malware defense and content filtering that replaces legacy proxy appliances.
Identity- and context-based access to private and cloud apps that replaces traditional VPNs, aligned to NIST 800-207.
Visibility and control over SaaS and AI applications - built to secure the emerging "vibe code" era of AI-generated apps.
Inline data discovery, deep content inspection, multi-DLP support and Exact Data Match to cut false positives and ease compliance.
A free platform giving any organization visibility into the AI tools its people use, with governance across ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini and Grok.
iboss has cited more than 4,000 enterprise customers, including Fortune 50 and Fortune 500 companies in regulated industries, government agencies, and a large base of K-12 and higher-education institutions. The education footprint is not incidental: iboss carries compliance features specific to that sector - CIPA web filtering, student-safety reporting and FERPA-aligned data handling - which made schools an early and durable market.
The problem it solves is the one every distributed organization eventually hits. When people work from everywhere, the old model of backhauling traffic to a central office is slow, expensive and insecure. Legacy VPNs grant broad network access once a user connects; proxy appliances need constant hardware refreshes; VDI is costly to run. iboss's pitch is to replace all three with a single cloud service that improves security, speeds up the user experience and cuts cost by consolidating tools.
“A single service that replaces legacy VPNs, proxy appliances and VDI - improving security, increasing the end-user experience, consolidating technology and reducing costs.”
The SASE and Security Service Edge (SSE) market is crowded and well-funded. Zscaler leads on scale; Netskope built its strength around understanding the data inside traffic; Palo Alto Networks' Prisma Access inherits deep policy controls from its firewall lineage; Cato, Cisco and Cloudflare round out the field. iboss does not try to out-feature all of them.
Its differentiation is twofold. First, architecture: iboss built a fully containerized cloud from the ground up, which underpins its ability to offer dedicated cloud IPs and predictable performance. Second, positioning: iboss aims for a more accessible price point, making it a common default for the mid-market, government and education - segments where the enterprise leaders' pricing can be the primary barrier. The tradeoff is honest - feature depth in each capability is solid but sometimes trails the category leaders - and iboss's answer is consolidation and cost rather than maximal depth.
TOTAL RAISED: ~$180M · ANNUAL REVENUE: ~$94M (third-party estimate, not officially disclosed)
Twin brothers Paul and Peter Martini set out to reinvent network security.
iboss moves the proxy and web gateway into the cloud, ahead of the SASE category.
A $35 million round funds cloud platform growth.
iboss aligns to the NIST 800-207 framework and adds ZTNA.
NightDragon and Francisco Partners lead a round to accelerate SASE growth.
Paul Martini named CyberSecurity Company CEO of the Year.
iboss ships AI governance, inline DLP and an AI-powered CASB for AI apps.
iboss launches a free tool for visibility into employee AI tool usage.
iboss delivers a cloud-native Zero Trust SASE platform that consolidates secure web gateway, ZTNA, CASB, DLP and firewall functions into a single SaaS service, connecting users to applications securely from anywhere.
iboss was founded in 2003 by twin brothers Paul Martini (CEO and CTO) and Peter Martini (President), and is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.
Roughly $180 million total, including a $35 million Series A from Goldman Sachs and a $145 million Series B led by NightDragon and Francisco Partners in January 2021.
In the SASE/SSE market, iboss competes with Zscaler, Netskope, Palo Alto Networks, Cato Networks, Cisco and Cloudflare, positioning itself toward the mid-market, government and education sectors.
Thousands of enterprises, government agencies and education institutions - including Fortune 50 and Fortune 500 companies - use iboss, which processes over 100 billion transactions daily.