Cloud Security Startup Dazz Hires SentinelOne Exec As CRO For Channel Push

Jared Phipps is joining Dazz as the remediation-focused security vendor looks to scale up its work with channel partners, the former SentinelOne SVP tells CRN.

Cloud security startup Dazz has hired a longtime cybersecurity industry executive, Jared Phipps, as the three-year-old company looks to double down on its work with the channel.

Dazz exclusively told CRN that Phipps — most recently a senior vice president at prominent cybersecurity vendor SentinelOne — is joining the company as its new CRO.

In an interview, Phipps said the opportunity to once again scale up an early-stage security company and “build something substantial” was the major draw. Previously, Phipps joined SentinelOne in 2018, three years before its record-setting initial public offering.

SentinelOne has been “an amazing ride, and now I get the chance to do this again with a younger company,” he told CRN.

The initial progress by Dazz at working with channel partners was also a positive sign, Phipps noted. The startup’s key early partners include Presidio, No. 23 on CRN’s Solution Provider 500.

The importance of committing to a “100-percent channel” strategy is among the key learnings that Phipps said he’s taking from his six years at SentinelOne.

“I’ve seen the impact of that [channel strategy] on SentinelOne’s growth rates,” he said. “So to me that's tremendously important.”

Remediation-Focused Approach

Founded in early 2021 by Microsoft alums including CEO Merav Bahat, Dazz offers a cloud security platform focused on improved prioritization and remediation of cloud vulnerabilities. Rather than generating alerts, the Dazz platform aims to correlate issues across detection tools and provide a robust remediation plan, the company said.

Dazz has raised $60 million in funding to date, including a sizable Series A round of $50 million in late 2021 from investors including Insight Partners, Greylock Partners and Index Ventures.

Dazz had already stood out in the crowded cloud security space with its remediation-focused approach and massive market opportunity, said Jon Jensen, vice president of cybersecurity sales at Presidio.

Now, the startup is on track to accelerate its efforts with partners with the hire of Phipps as CRO, according to Jensen.

“With [Phipps] coming into the mix here, I couldn't be more thrilled,” Jensen said. “I have no doubt that Jared landing at Dazz will help drive the next steps in the evolution of their channel program.”

Following a career in the U.S. Air Force, Phipps held roles at MITRE and Fidelis Cybersecurity before joining SentinelOne as a vice president in 2018. He moved up to senior vice president of worldwide sales engineering in 2020, and was then promoted to senior vice president of Americas sales and solution engineering in 2022.

With a background that included working in incident response, Phipps said he has long been aware of the difficulties related to remediation of security issues. And the challenge has only gotten more serious with the arrival of cloud, he said.

“That legacy problem that has existed for decades is now magnified,” Phipps said.

Augmenting CNAPP

While many organizations at this point have deployed cloud security tools such as CSPM (cloud security posture management) — or even a full CNAPP (cloud-native application protection platform) — Dazz fits in by working with those tools to make them more effective, according to Phipps.

“What we're saying is, add Dazz on top of what [the partner] has already advised you to do, and you're going to get even better returns out of that,” he said. “Suddenly, their CNAPP investment is more valuable.”

For Presidio, a tool like Dazz that can augment existing cloud security capabilities is exactly the type of offering that customers are seeking at this juncture, Jensen said.

In bringing Dazz to customers, “the reception has been outstanding so far,” he said. “I'm very enthusiastic.”