It’s no secret that Montgomery County is a hotbed for cybersecurity companies, since the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence based in Rockville, along with NIST and several leading universities. And that is precisely what attracted Israeli start-up Sepio Systems to the area, and ultimately to Launch Workplaces in Gaithersburg. Serial entrepreneur and CEO Yossi Appleboum moved to Maryland three years ago, and while he might pine for the sun and good food of his native Israel, realizes that market success can happen here. Already his company has exceeded expectations, both with sales and with raising capital.
The use of malicious hardware devices such as mice, keyboards, and chargers by cybercrime organizations is on the rise. Sepio Systems helps protect enterprise environments from infected peripheral hardware. Their suite is currently the first solution available that identifies and blocks malicious hardware devices before they can cause any harm. The suite sniffs out and stops rogue hardware before it damages normal operations or degrades system performance. The system can prevent the recent ATM Jackpotting attacks, according to Robert Bigman, a senior advisor to Sepio and the former Chief Information Security Officer for the Central Intelligence Agency.
Yossi Appleboum feels passionate about cybersecurity because he served with the Israeli Army Intelligence Corps and experienced first hand the trouble cybercriminals can cause. This is his third cybersecurity startup. His previous two companies advanced quickly in creation, nurture and sale—WebSilicon was acquired by Magal, a publicly traded security company, and the auto industry purchased the second. We can expect a similar growth trajectory for Sepio systems. Indeed, they already have other offices in South Carolina, New York, London and Singapore. Research is managed out of Israel. “We were introduced to Launch by one of our resellers, Sherpas Cyber Security Group, and have been happy with the decision to have our headquarters here,” says Yossi.
Yossi is joined in Gaithersburg by Vice President of Sales Gregory Poch. Greg has over 30 years’ of experience as an executive account manager and sales team leader. A Villanova graduate, Greg was previously vice president of sales for Senstar’s fiber optic division.
Sepio is a Latin word for “defend” and “guard.” We can all feel safer knowing that Launch members Yossi and Greg are helping to protect our national networks!
