network-security
(47)
BTC Broadband has a plan for the next severed cable
The Bixby telephone company grew into a fiber, voice and managed IT provider. Its next test is keeping Oklahoma customers connected when something goes wrong.
DNSFilter has to block the bad stuff. And let the work through.
An early customer walked away because the filtering was not ready. His return explains the appeal of DNSFilter - and the balancing act behind its expansion into a broader security platform.
Palo Alto Networks wants fewer tools on your security bill
The firewall maker is buying and building its way across corporate cybersecurity. Its pitch is less busywork for defenders - with a bigger share of the budget flowing to Palo Alto.
Purple Sold the Broadband Business. Then It Made the WiFi Login Pay.
The Manchester company stopped selling broadband and began selling what happens after people connect. Its software now turns an ordinary utility into consented customer data, indoor directions and a measurable line on the profit-and-loss statement.
The Firewall Grew Up. Now Check Point Wants It to Police AI
Check Point built a $2.7 billion business by remembering what crossed the network. Its next act is harder: governing prompts, agents and cloud traffic without making security teams buy another pile of tools.
The Khan Brothers Sold the Network Once. Then They Rebuilt It for the Cloud.
Alkira turned the least cloud-like part of cloud computing - the network - into an on-demand service. Eight years, $176 million in funding and one $475 million acquisition later, its biggest test is whether software and fiber can finally behave like one product.
The $48 Million Bet That Your Security Stack Already Missed Something
Lumu built a cybersecurity company around an unfashionable question: what if the intruder is already inside? Its answer is to read the trail in network metadata, confirm the compromise, and make the security stack respond.
GreyNoise Built a Business by Telling Security Teams What to Ignore
Most cyber vendors sell more alarms. GreyNoise built thousands of patient decoys, learned the rhythm of indiscriminate attacks, and made a business out of the far more useful answer: not this one.
Tufin’s Bet: The Firewall Is Fine. The Policy Sprawl Is the Problem.
Big companies do not have one firewall; they have a small parliament of them. Tufin built the policy layer that gets Cisco, Palo Alto, Fortinet, Check Point, cloud controls and SASE tools to follow the same rules.
Elisity’s Bet: Make the Switches You Already Own Stop the Next Breach
Hospitals and factories have thousands of devices they cannot patch, reboot or even name. Elisity’s answer is to identify them, limit where they can talk and make the existing network do the enforcing.
Versa Networks Is Selling Less Network - and That’s the Point
The Santa Clara company built one operating system for the jobs enterprises once handed to a small army of routers, firewalls and cloud-security tools. The bet works when consolidation beats specialization - and when the migration team does the unglamorous teaching.
Netskope Bet the Firewall Would Move to the Cloud. Now It Has to Keep AI From Eating the Office
A decade before every board wanted an AI policy, Netskope built a cloud checkpoint for data on the move. The bet worked - but winning SASE now means fighting familiar giants, funding a private network, and making security feel faster than doing nothing.
Appgate Escaped the VPN Bottleneck - Then Had to Escape Its Own Balance Sheet
Its direct-routed Zero Trust software promised to remove the chokepoints created by legacy VPNs. After a public-market detour ended in Chapter 11, Appgate is testing whether a cleaner balance sheet can do the same for the business.
FireMon Built a Business Cleaning Up the Firewall Rules Nobody Wants to Touch
Every enterprise wants zero trust. First, someone has to explain the 10-year-old firewall rule labeled “temporary.” FireMon sells the control plane for that unglamorous, expensive job.
TenPlus Systems Built a 34-Year Business Around the Moment Your Laptop Stops Cooperating
The Raleigh company sells the shiny machines, fixes the broken ones, and offers to run the network in between. Its durable idea is simple: the least glamorous parts of technology are often the parts customers will keep paying to make disappear.
The Box That Pays You Back for the Bandwidth You Already Waste
No app, no monthly bill, no login screen. Deeper Network sells a matchbox-sized router that guards your whole home network and turns your leftover bandwidth into crypto - and it is one of the few DePIN projects with a product you can actually hold.
The Pentest That Never Clocks Out
A solo hacker in Madison got tired of writing the same annual report twice. So he built software to run the test all year - and turned continuous penetration testing into a business.
The Firewall Company That Bet Everything on the Middle
For 30 years, WatchGuard has sold security to the companies too small for Palo Alto and too serious to go without - and built its whole business around the partners who install it.
Aeris
Aeris spent three decades making machines talk over cellular networks. Now, with 104 million devices in its orbit, it wants to make sure nobody dangerous is listening - or speaking back.
A10 Networks, Inc.
A10 Networks built a durable business in the least glamorous place on the internet: the traffic choke point. Now the same machinery that kept telecom networks moving is being recast for APIs, AI models and agentic software.
Nile
Nile is a San Jose-based Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) company founded in 2018 by former Cisco leaders Pankaj Patel and John Chambers, along with Suresh Katukam and Sri Hosakote. It replaces the traditional buy-and-manage model for enterprise wired and wireless LANs with a cloud-delivered subscription that bundles hardware, software, zero-trust security, AI-driven automation, and performance guarantees. Nile designs, deploys, monitors, and continuously optimizes campus networks so IT teams no longer have to, targeting the roughly $75B enterprises spend each year running networks.
Sixscape Communications
Sixscape Communications is a Singapore-based cybersecurity vendor specializing in Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) automation and post-quantum readiness. Founded in 2014 by cryptography veteran Lawrence Hughes, the company builds digital certificate-based products for secure email (S/MIME), password-less authentication, IoT device identity and unified communications. Its patented Identity Registration Protocol (IRP), assigned IANA port 4604, automates the request, issuance and management of X.509 certificates so enterprises can deploy trusted digital identities in seconds rather than weeks. Sixscape sells through a 100% partner-centric model spanning system integrators, resellers and certificate authorities, and positions its IDcentral platform for certificate lifecycle management and cryptographic posture management in a market bracing for shorter TLS certificate lifespans and the migration to quantum-safe algorithms.
Aerwave
Aerwave is a Texas-based proptech company that designs, deploys and operates next-generation managed Wi-Fi for multifamily residential communities. It delivers property-wide, gigabit-speed internet that is secure and always on, paired with 24/7 domestic support, an owner analytics dashboard, and a capital program that lets property owners deploy infrastructure with no upfront cost. Aerwave works exclusively with real estate owners, developers and operators across the multifamily, build-to-rent, single-family rental and student-housing markets.
iboss
iboss is a Boston-based cloud security company that delivers a cloud-native Zero Trust Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) platform. Founded in 2003 by twin brothers Paul and Peter Martini, iboss consolidates network security functions - secure web gateway, ZTNA, CASB, data loss prevention and firewall - into a single SaaS service that connects users to applications from anywhere while replacing legacy VPNs, proxy appliances and VDI. The platform is used by thousands of enterprises, government agencies and school districts, and processes over 100 billion transactions daily.
Younity
Younity is a New York and Tel Aviv based proptech company that builds a software-defined digital infrastructure platform for multifamily and commercial buildings. It delivers property-wide, instantly provisioned WiFi paired with a SaaS layer for building performance monitoring, cyber protection, proactive service and an open platform for smart-building integrations. Younity helps landlords, developers and asset managers turn connectivity from a cost center into a revenue source while giving tenants lightning-fast, secure internet from move-in.
Palo Alto Networks
Palo Alto Networks is a global cybersecurity company that helps organizations prevent, detect and respond to cyber threats across networks, clouds, endpoints and identities. Founded in 2005 by Nir Zuk, it pioneered the next-generation firewall and has since expanded into an integrated security platform spanning network security (Strata), cloud security (Prisma), and AI-driven security operations (Cortex). Serving roughly 70,000 organizations in more than 150 countries, including most of the Fortune 100, it is one of the largest pure-play cybersecurity vendors in the world.
Fortinet
Fortinet is a global cybersecurity company founded in 2000 by brothers Ken and Michael Xie. Best known for its FortiGate firewalls and purpose-built security ASICs, Fortinet converges networking and security into a single platform - the Fortinet Security Fabric - powered by the FortiOS operating system. It serves enterprises, service providers, and governments in more than 100 countries, and in 2025 reported $6.8 billion in revenue.
Zscaler
Zscaler is a cloud-native cybersecurity company that pioneered the zero trust security model for enterprises. Its Zero Trust Exchange platform connects users, devices, and applications directly and securely over the internet - inspecting traffic in the cloud rather than backhauling it through legacy hardware appliances. Founded in 2007 and publicly traded on NASDAQ as ZS, Zscaler processes hundreds of billions of transactions daily for thousands of large organizations, and has expanded into AI-driven security operations, data protection, and digital experience monitoring.
Check Point Software Technologies
Check Point Software Technologies is an Israeli cybersecurity company founded in 1993 that pioneered the modern firewall with its stateful inspection technology. Today it runs the Infinity platform - a unified, AI-powered security architecture spanning network (Quantum), cloud (CloudGuard), and workspace (Harmony) - protecting more than 100,000 organizations across roughly 60 countries. Publicly traded on NASDAQ as CHKP, it reported about $2.73 billion in 2025 revenue.
CUJO AI
CUJO AI is a network intelligence and cybersecurity company that turns raw broadband network data into actionable insights for internet and mobile operators. Founded in 2015, its cloud-native platform uses machine learning to identify and classify connected devices, block malware and phishing in real time, and deliver digital life protection, parental controls and network analytics. Delivered as software to carriers rather than as consumer hardware, CUJO AI reaches more than 60 million homes and monitors billions of connected devices for operators including Comcast, Charter, TELUS, Sky and Rogers.