Ann Arbor security startup Censys has hired Duo West sales veteran Will Saso of San Jose, CA, to head up its worldwide sales. We take this as a positive sign that security startups in Ann Arbor are able to draw in top hires from Silicon Valley, if still not outside their Duo network of talent.
Cybersecurity startup Censys, which offers visibility and risk assessment of businesses’ constantly evolving security vulnerabilities, recently announced that it has hired Derek Abdine as CTO, who will head up technical strategy and innovation. Abdine brings 15 years of work in security industry leadership to the role, as well as experience as an industry evangelist.
Susan Wagner of KLA Corporation spoke up front at this year’s TechTalk out of Ann Arbor on the importance of diversity and inclusion. Inclusion gives companies the diversity of thought and experience to be as creative and innovative as possible. “We should work together to life one another up. It does not mean that just because others succeed we will fail… all boats rise together,” she said. “KLA is a global company. COVID’s impact can vary,” Wagner said. “The semiconductor industry is playing a crucial role to enable work from home. Many things are changing, some for good,” she said. “Electronics are more important than ever to keep us connected.”
In light of the recent Meow attacks that delete vulnerable databases on the internet, we were curious when Ann Arbor-based tech startup Censys announced $15.5 million in new funding and yet another phase in their mission to make vulnerable online data visible to companies so they can resolve it.
Today we caught up with the new Phimation Strategy Group and Ann Arbor SPARK sponsored Rising Leaders program, which piloted this year to mentor business leaders in the Ann Arbor area. At the Circ Bar in Ann Arbor, we heard speeches from several tech, talent, and business leaders to hear their best career advice and leadership lessons.
Several months ago during our launch, Cronicle interviewed Censys co-founder David Adrian to hear about how a University of Michigan student went from falling into a research project to avoid a machine learning class to having 30,000 customers. Since that interview, Censys has expanded into their first-floor suite on Ann Arbor’s Main Street from the second floor, planned a security-themed tech talk for the fall with a colleague from Palo Alto, expanded from 15 people to 28, and just publicly announced their new Censys Enterprise platform tool that curates data sets for users so they don’t have to wait 10 months for a data scientist to analyze the massive amount of information Censys can deliver about their servers, domains, and other assets online.
It’s not every undergraduate student who falls into a research project in order to avoid a machine learning class, and shortly has 30,000 customers, but that’s what happened to David Adrian of Censys. Which isn’t to say he isn’t brilliant and hard-working. He definitely has that whiz kid mannerism about him, and he knows his…
