CipherOptics Secures Funding from Kodiak Venture Partners To Enable True Gigabit-Speed Data Encryption; Kodiak Leads $5 Million Financial Commitment.Business Editors RALEIGH, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 22, 2002 CipherOptics, a leading innovator of high-speed data encryption data encryption, the process of scrambling stored or transmitted information so that it is unintelligible until it is unscrambled by the intended recipient. Historically, data encryption has been used primarily to protect diplomatic and military secrets from foreign , announced today that it has closed $5 million in Series A funding commitments. The company's first institutional round was led by Kodiak Venture Partners of Concord, Massachusetts Concord is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, in the United States. As of the 2000 Census, the town population was about 17,000. Although a small town, Concord is noted for its leading roles in American history and literature. , a venture capital firm focused on seed and early stage investments in emerging communications, semiconductor and software companies. CipherOptics will use the round to build future generation security products and to establish sales and partner channels for the CipherOptics Security Gateway, a high-performance network security appliance Security appliances protect computer networks from unwanted data traffic, intruders, email spam, enforce policies, and may also be used to create and manage VPNs. There are a number of types of security appliances. designed to enable the encryption The reversible transformation of data from the original (the plaintext) to a difficult-to-interpret format (the ciphertext) as a mechanism for protecting its confidentiality, integrity and sometimes its authenticity. Encryption uses an encryption algorithm and one or more encryption keys. of all data without diminishing network throughput even at full Ethernet Gigabit speeds. "While security is continually of paramount importance in today's marketplace, security solutions still must demonstrate a strong and quantifiable ROI (Return On Investment) The monetary benefits derived from having spent money on developing or revising a system. In the IT world, there are more ways to compute ROI than Carter has liver pills (and for those of you who never heard of that expression, it means a lot). to enterprise customers," said Ilan Carmi, a partner at Kodiak Venture Partners. "CipherOptics has created a security appliance that overcomes the historic price performance problems in high end data centers, high performance networks and storage network environments. The ability to encrypt See encryption. all data without compromising network throughput at a reasonable price will make the CipherOptics solution very attractive to security-conscious companies." CipherOptics was founded by technology industry veterans Michael Doss and Dennis Toothman. The two founders have a combined 55 years of experience in creating and marketing technology products and both were instrumental in the successful acquisition of Netlink, a supplier of frame relay A high-speed packet switching protocol used in wide area networks (WANs). Providing a granular service of up to DS3 speed (45 Mbps), it has become popular for LAN to LAN connections across remote distances, and services are offered by most major carriers. access solutions, by Cabletron. Additionally, Doss has held several key executive positions at Nortel and IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) . Most recently he was Senior VP of Marketing and Strategic Development with Siemens. Prior to founding CipherOptics, Toothman was VP of Engineering for Celotek, a high-speed data encryption company that he successfully positioned for acquisition by Cylink. "Until now the option of encrypting and securing all corporate data communications data communications, application of telecommunications technology to the problem of transmitting data, especially to, from, or between computers. In popular usage, it is said that data communications make it possible for one computer to "talk" with another. was not feasible due to price and network performance factors," said CipherOptics Co-founder Mike Doss Michael Allen Doss (born March 24, 1981 in Canton, Ohio) is an American football safety for the National Football League's Minnesota Vikings. High school Doss attended Canton McKinley High School whom he helped win back-to-back state titles, as well as a USA Today . "Since the CipherOptics Security Gateway encrypts data at Gigabit wire speeds, corporations can secure all data communications while fully maximizing network resources. The Kodiak Venture Partners investment is a vote of confidence in our strategy to significantly impact the data encryption security market. We are excited to join forces with a high caliber partner such as Kodiak." Carmi will join CipherOptics founders Doss and Toothman on the company's board of directors. Carmi focuses on communications and semiconductor investment opportunities for Kodiak. He was the founding investor and active Chairman of Trebia Networks and is a member of the board and an early lead investor in Egenera, BTI BTI Beverage Testing Institute BTI Boyce Thompson Institute BTI British American Tobacco (stock symbol) BTI Boston Theological Institute Bti Bacillus Thuringiensis Israelensis BTI BioTechnology Institute BTI Binding Tariff Information Photonics and Tiaris. Additionally, he has served in various executive positions with Nortel, Bay Networks, 3Com and Chipcom. The CipherOptics management team also includes technology industry veterans Ann Gilliam, VP of Business Development and Scott Palmquist, VP of Product Management. Prior to joining CipherOptics, Gilliam was VP of Business Development at Teksell.com and Palmquist was Sr. Manager of Product Marketing with Cisco. About Kodiak Venture Partners Kodiak Venture Partners is a venture capital firm focused on seed and early stage investments in emerging communications, semiconductor and software companies. With focus in the eastern regions of the US and Canada, Kodiak Venture Partners builds relationships with entrepreneurs who seek accelerated market success. Kodiak's investment partners are themselves successful high-tech business entrepreneurs who take a high-impact, hands-on approach to founding, operating, building and funding market leaders. About CipherOptics CipherOptics Inc., a privately-held company headquartered in Raleigh, N.C., USA, designs and manufactures data security solutions for high-speed networks. With its recent introduction of the industry's first true Gigabit-speed encryption appliance, CipherOptics is dedicated to increasing security across all network applications at maximum throughput levels. For more information about CipherOptics, visit http://www.cipheroptics.com. |
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