vArmour Builds Out Executive Leadership, Appointing SVP of Field Operations, Chief Information Security Officer and Head of Threat Security Engineering

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA–(Marketwired – May 13, 2015) – vArmour, the data center security company that transforms how organizations protect their virtualized and cloud assets, today announced the executive appointments of three industry leaders who will accelerate the company’s hyper-growth. Dean Hickman-Smith joins the company as senior vice president of field operations, Demetrios (Laz) Lazarikos has been appointed as chief information security officer, and Zhiping Liu has been named head of threat security engineering.

“The entire data center has become distributed — from compute to network to storage. vArmour is the first and only company to bring a distributed approach to security,” said Tim Eades, CEO of vArmour. “And to protect enterprises using this new methodology, you need to have the best team on the planet. I am incredibly pleased that Zhiping, Laz and Dean have joined our company, as they are spot-on brilliant in their field of expertise and their leadership skills will greatly benefit our expanding customer base.”

The digitization of business is driving enterprises to think about how they can transform their data centers to meet increasing demands without compromising security. For the first time ever, vArmour’s patented, distributed approach to data security enables enterprises to do just that. With vArmour, organizations are able to securely build hybrid cloud infrastructures that are agile with the business. With these new executive appointments, the company will further accelerate the adoption of its distributed security system so that enterprises can visualize threats within minutes, protect and see 100 percent of their data center traffic — not just the 20 percent seen by the perimeter — and reduce operating cost by 70 percent.

As senior vice president of vArmour’s field operations, Dean Hickman-Smith will expand adoption of vArmour’s distributed security system in major enterprises, service providers and government accounts globally. Dean will continue to recruit key team members in the field and build a network of channel partners to create a robust ecosystem that will deliver vArmour to customers worldwide. Dean’s past leadership experience includes building a global network of strategic channel partners that served more than 15,000 customers, scaling field operations to support mega-growth of emerging companies and helping take three companies public that are now valued in the billions. Prior to joining vArmour, Dean held roles as SVP of worldwide field operations at Aerohive Networks and SVP of worldwide sales & services at leading cloud security company Proofpoint, and was vice president of emerging technology at both Juniper Networks and NetScreen (prior to acquisition by Juniper).

Demetrios Lazarikos (Laz), an industry-recognized visionary for building information security programs that leverage big data analytics, joins vArmour as chief information security officer (CISO). As CISO, Laz will leverage his experience in working for and with Fortune 1,000 organizations and help build vArmour’s proprietary data center security technology. Laz’s past roles include: IT security researcher and strategist at Blue Lava Consulting, CISO at Sears Online Business Unit, CISO at Silver Tail Systems (acquired by RSA/EMC), VP of strategic initiatives at ReddShell Corporation (acquired by TrustWave) and contributor to several InfoSec Open Source projects.

Zhiping Liu, named head of threat security engineering at vArmour, will lead the company’s development efforts on threat and malware protection. Zhiping brings six years of experience from Palo Alto Networks, where she led the engineering team that made WildFire into the catalyst it is today for Palo Alto Networks’ growth. With this deep expertise in developing next-generation firewalls, Zhiping will play a pivotal leadership role in shaping and executing the company’s threat protection strategy. In addition to her experience with WildFire, Zhiping also led the Palo Alto Networks software engineering team responsible for AppID and threat vulnerability engine. Prior to that, she led software engineering efforts at Juniper Networks, Netcontinuum, Netscaler and Nextron Communications.

“As a former CEO of Palo Alto Networks, one of my highest priorities was hiring the best team possible as we moved quickly into and through a hyper-growth stage. Having leading innovation and a technical advantage was essential — but having the right team in place was critical to achieving success for our customers,” said Lane Bess, vArmour board member. “The vArmour leadership team, led by Tim, is following the same philosophy across all disciplines by building an all-star team to execute and redefine security in the data center.”

About vArmour
Based in Mountain View, CA, vArmour is the data center security company that transforms how organizations protect their virtualized and cloud assets in a world without perimeters. The company was founded in 2011 and has raised $42 million in funding led by Highland Capital Partners, Menlo Ventures, Columbus Nova Technology Partners, Citi Ventures, Work-Bench Ventures and Allegis Capital. vArmour is leading the industry with a new patented, distributed approach to data security that allows organizations to deliver IT at the speed of business. Learn more at www.vArmour.com.