Former Netscape Executives Join Symplified's Advisory Board
Symplified, a cloud security company, announced that Internet technology luminaries and former Netscape executives Taher Elgamal and Todd Rulon-Miller have joined its advisory board. During his tenure as senior vice president of worldwide sales and services at Netscape, Rulon-Miller scaled revenues from startup to more than $600 million. Meanwhile, Elgamal served as chief scientist for Netscape from 1995-1998 where he invented SSL encryption. Both Elgamal and Rulon-Miller will provide Symplified’s management team with counsel on technology and growth strategy for its cloud identity and access management service.
"The cloud is fundamentally changing the way the world approaches IT in much the same way that the Web did before it, and Symplified is changing the way the world manages identity in this new era. The addition of Taher Elgamal and Todd Rulon-Miller, two of the most influential technology executives of the Web era, to Symplified’s advisory board is a major coup,” said Eric Olden, CEO of Symplified. “Their experience scaling Netscape into the first dominant infrastructure provider for the Web will be invaluable in helping Symplified extend its lead as the number one provider of cloud identity management services critical to enable secure adoption of the Cloud.”
Todd Rulon-Miller Rulon-Miller is the former senior vice president of worldwide sales and services at Netscape Communications. During his time at Netscape, Rulon-Miller built the company’s sales team to 800 employees operating in more than 30 countries, and in August 1995, Netscape completed the then-most-successful initial public offering on the NASDAQ. Before his role at Netscape, Rulon-Miller served in executive roles at First Data Resources, IBM, NeXT Inc., Software Alliance, and Tandem Computers.
Additionally, he has served on the board of directors for Active Software; Epiphany; and early identity software provider Oblix Software, and currently serves on the Board of Crowd Science for Aerohive, TouchCommerce and Zuora and is a founding partner of Apogee Venture Group, an early-stage venture investment and consulting firm. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University.
“With over one million licensed users, Symplified has quickly taken the pole position to become the dominant player in what is fast becoming an enormous market for cloud identity and access management solutions,” Rulon-Miller said. “I’m excited to be part of this experienced, dynamic team that is defining the next generation of identity for the cloud. The Symplified team has done this once already with great success in the Web era at Securant, and is well on its way with the cloud.”
Taher Elgamal Elgamal founded of IdentityMind, a provider of new security services for online payments and financial services, and CISO of Axway, a global provider of collaborative business solutions. He started his career at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in 1984 and served as chief scientist at Netscape Communications from 1995 to 1998, where he was a driving force behind SSL. He also was the director of engineering at RSA Security Inc. before founding Securify in 1998 and becoming its CEO. Securify was acquired by Secure Computing and is now part of McAfee. In 2006, Elgamal joined Tumbleweed Communications as Chief Technology Officer. Tumbleweed was acquired in 2008 by Axway Inc. He is an adviser to Onset Ventures, Glenbrook Partners, PGP Corporation (acquired by Symantec), Arcot Systems (acquired by Computer Associates), Finjan (acquired by M86 Security), Facetime, and Zetta. Elgamal holds a bachelor’s degree from Cairo University, and masters and doctorate degrees in computer science from Stanford University.
“Symplified had the vision several years ago to create the first next-generation platform for single sign-on, access control and user management for public and private clouds,” Elgamal said. “This fully integrated platform has a substantial lead over other solutions that are on the market or in development. I look forward to working with them as a strategic advisor to extend their technology lead and help usher in the next wave of computing in the cloud.”