For the past 3 decades, I’ve built and operated secure and resilient enterprise compute, networking and data systems at-scale - used globally by millions of customers across dozens of vertical market segments. I started down this path at DEC (IYKYK) pioneering Layer 1-5 devices that replaced hard-wired desktop-to-machine connectivity. From our desktop, for the first time, we could roam for and connect to any networked resource - the ground-breaking dawn of IoT. Pre-launch, those devices became the only way we connected and worked (i.e. dog-fooding), putting me in the customer’s seat and creating devOps ownership before devOps was a thing. At EMC (pre-Dell) I was a founding engineer building early enterprise-ready network-attached storage. This work, what we referred to as [.text-disabled]dial[.text-disabled] data-tone, was homage to what would become cloud-storage. Here too, in the spirit of “living under the bridge we built”, before launching, we stored our production source repository on our own NAS products, we became super sure of our resilience and security posture - another dog-fooding opportunity taken. At AWS, the initial service I built was Amazon Elastic File System (EFS), the first of its kind serverless, fully elastic, exabyte-scale file storage used by 100’s of thousands of SaaS developers and enterprises in a vast set of vertical segments (e.g., Telecom, HCLS, O&G, M&E, Finserv, Manufacturing, etc.). As an AWS builder I led the launch of a dozen data services following EFS, each cost-effectively enabling cloud-native data storage, integration, and protection, from GB to EB scale. AWS was DEC + EMC x (7x24x3600)n! on all dimensions (IYKYK). Building these types of infrastructure is challenging in a good way, and when you get it right for customers (i.e. secure, resilient, simple, performant, cost-effective), it's gratifying, satisfying, and frankly, energizing.
I love applying the right technology to hard problems that result in delighted customers and business results. Good news: there is never a lack of opportunity to make that happen! Increasingly, we build systems and systems-of-systems on powerful technologies: powerful xPU compute, containers, serverless, micro-services, a myriad of database capabilities, object stores, elastic cloud everything, as well as new and exciting OSS innovations made available near daily, all of it only an API call away. This introduces endless possibilities and near-endless security and resilience risks. As a builder, addressing these risks with powerful, simple to use products is motivating. As example, architecting solutions that address end-to-end Zero Trust (ZT) architectures for distributed systems. Why? It's no secret that with accelerating frequency, sophistication, and real-world impact all digital systems are under attack from adversaries using innovative methods of penetrating digital infrastructure and mission critical business systems - from finance and healthcare to utilities and manufacturing, and government and municipalities. Now is the time where end-to-end defense-in-depth ZT architectures are a must, across all digital systems. This is where my story with Anjuna Security started.
A few years ago, serendipitously at a round-table dinner, I met Ayal Yogev, founder and CEO of Anjuna Security, a company uniquely building what they call a Universal Confidential Computing platform. Specifically a Confidential Computing platform called Anjuna Seaglass. Seaglass solves the challenging ‘last-mile’ problem of securing applications and data in ZT architectures, doing so with incredible simplicity. Their approach requires no change to your source code, with a single-click or command that integrates with your existing CI/CD pipelines, offers the flexibility you need through configurable policy, and is universally available on all major clouds and processor types. Besides the engaging and memorable dinner conversation, I was intrigued by what Ayal was building. It was super clear to me that dinner was the start of our relationship, kindredly we’re both energized to solve important industry-wide, mission-class problems. This is why I’m super excited to be joining Anjuna Security as an advisor. Ayal and his executive team, the board, and their accomplished advisors have built innovative, simple to use, universally available, resilient, cost-effective Confidential Computing solutions to solve one of today’s more important security needs: addressing the linchpin last-mile in end-to-end ZT architectures.
Uniquely, Anjuna Seaglass ensures an application’s always-encrypted execution within a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) using policy-based verification. What was complex and hard, Anjuna made ridiculously simple. Anjuna democratized Confidential Computing for all and in doing so makes Confidential Computing synonymous with “computing”. Simple. Period.
I'm excited to bring my experience building and operating to Anjuna, where we will enable enterprises of all sizes to easily and universally use Confidential Computing for all computing.
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