Ziften, New CEO, Focus on Simplified Endpoint Security

Las Vegas -- Endpoint security startup Ziften's new CEO Mike Hamilton says the goals for the company include driving growth through a partnership with Microsoft and a focus on integrating and simplifying a variety of endpoint protection technologies.

Endpoint security companies are hot these days, with Carbon Black recently launching an initial public offering (IPO) and Cylance expected to file soon. But the endpoint security market is also complex, requiring coverage of many different components, which might include laptop and desktop computers, servers, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and cloud components.

Ziften is looking to differentiate itself by including patch management, advanced antivirus (AV) and threat detection in one package. This helps solve trends in the industry: Security pros are overwhelmed with the number of security tools and alert systems the need to manage, so they are seeking products that integrate multiple capabilities. Ziften says this also helps security teams reduce the number of security agents running on their system.

This year they company struck a broad partnership with Microsoft, contributing its macOS and Linux visibility, behavioral analytics, and threat hunting capabilities to the Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) project. Here at the Black Hat conference, Ziften this week announced that its Zenith endpoint protection platform now includes advanced AV protecting all enterprise endpoints from known and unknown modern targeted attacks.

"Our focus is on simplifying on the endpoint," said Hamilton, in an interview here. "The endpoint market is super noisy. We now deliver full endpoint functionality. Enterprises have IT operations and security operations. IT operations own AV but no other security tools. There are not a lot of endpoint products that deliver to both."