Canellos’s Deep Entrepreneurial and Scale-Up Experience Will Help Axiad Deliver an Identity-First Zero Trust Future and Reach the Next Stage of Growth
Axiad, an identity-first enabler of the zero trust enterprise, announced the appointment of David Canellos as chief executive officer (CEO). In this role, Canellos will be responsible for leading and executing on the company’s vision, strategy and growth.
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Canellos believes Axiad is at the center of the next frontier in cybersecurity: a zero-trust construct that is built on the foundations of identity. Unlike traditional perimeter-based approaches to security, zero trust ensures only authenticated and authorized people and machines can gain access to only the specific network infrastructure, applications and data requested through a series of robust checks and balances. Axiad Cloud, the company’s unified platform, delivers on that promise – reconciling identities, eliminating implicit trust and continuously validating every stage of a digital interaction.
A History of Success
Prior to Axiad, Canellos was the president and CEO of Ericom Software, a SaaS provider of security service edge solutions, which was acquired by Ericsson. At Ericsson, he was the senior vice president of the enterprise wireless cybersecurity business unit.
“David is a visionary and proven leader who will take Axiad to its next level of growth,” said John DeLoche, co-founder of Invictus Growth Partners and a member of Axiad’s board of directors. “His successful track record in cybersecurity, plus his belief that you’re only as good as your supporting team, make him the ideal person to take the CEO role at Axiad.”
Earlier in his career, Canellos was president and CEO of Perspecsys, Inc., which was bought by Blue Coat Systems and then by Symantec (now owned by Broadcom, Inc.), where he served as the senior vice president of the advanced technology group and the senior vice president of global service providers. He was also the president of Cloakware Corporation, which was acquired by Irdeto, a division of Naspers, a company that provides digital platform cybersecurity.
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“Our chief competitors in the identity security space are relatively large and lumbering tankers, and I believe Axiad is a speedboat,” said Canellos. “This means we can move faster and innovate to address the needs of today’s digital-first enterprise and government organizations, and we have the technological differentiation to make identity the center of any security strategy. We also have a talented team of people whose collective efforts will play a pivotal role in our journey to get there, as evidenced by our rapidly growing roster of large enterprise and government customers.”
Yves Audebert and Bassam Al-Khalidi, previously co-CEOs of Axiad, will remain with the company as a non-operating chairperson and the chief innovation officer, respectively. Audebert will focus on helping to implement the company’s vision and strategy while Al-Khalidi will move into an evangelist and thought-leadership role.
“Axiad is at an exciting point in its evolution, as we have the right technology for the right unmet need in zero trust, with the right experience to make it a reality for our customers,” said Audebert. “The missing piece was an executive who had a track record of taking a company of our size to the next level in terms of scale, and we have certainly found that in David.”
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