Former Check Point CMO Parrish Lands At RedSeal

RedSeal has nabbed former Check Point Software Technologies Chief Marketing Officer Julie Parrish as its first CMO, the up-and-coming cybersecurity analytics company announced Wednesday.

Parrish left Check Point in June after only seven months with the Israel-based network security vendor. It does not appear that Check Point has publically named a replacement for Parrish. Check Point declined to comment.

Parrish started with RedSeal in October. In an interview with CRN, Parrish said she was drawn to the opportunity because of the market need the company fills, helping customers move beyond protection and detection technologies with a platform that provides visibility into their infrastructure. From there, customers can improve their security, leverage analytics, validate compliance, write security policies, identity and prioritize vulnerabilities, accelerate incident response, and build in best practices, she said.

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"RedSeal's technology, their vision and the gap that I think they fill is pretty compelling," Parrish said. "They are creating the next wave of thinking, which really opens up the aperture for partners in term of where else can I go to have more opportunities and help customers really drive a robust security strategy that isn’t about selling the next great firewall…This is a completely different approach to security."

Before Check Point, Parrish served as chief marketing officer at NetApp, a position she held from November 2012 to October 2015. Before that, she held marketing leadership roles at Symantec, Veritas, Nokia and 3Com. That industry experience will be critical as RedSeal continues to expand, Chairman and CEO Ray Rothrock said in a statement about the appointment.

"Julie rounds out our leadership bench with perspective and deep cyber industry expertise, and she understands the C-Suite's quest for ROI across all budget line items," Rothrock said in a statement. "We're thrilled to have her further extend RedSeal's value proposition -- of enabling digital resilience, measuring cybersecurity effectiveness, and mapping cyber investments to results – to the C-Suite and executives across organizations."

While she has worked with bigger security companies in the past, Parrish said she is now excited to have the opportunity to work at a smaller, but quickly growing company like RedSeal, where she said she can have a lot of influence on the strategic direction and all levels of the business. RedSeal currently has around $30 million in revenue and approximately 120 employees.

"I was a little curious as to how it would feel [being at a smaller company], but I love it … Everyone that is in the company is so passionate and excited about what we're trying to achieve that people are willing to jump in and help regardless of what your job title is. It's incredibly refreshing," Parrish said.

As RedSeal's first chief marketing officer, Parrish was brought in to accelerate the company's sales and marketing push, she said. Parrish said she wants to establish RedSeal as a thought leader around what she calls "digital resilience" as the foundation of security and helping educate customers on the importance of a cyber analytics platform to model their infrastructure. As it is a newer market in security, Parrish said education through marketing will be key.

Nic Alicandri, founder and chief business officer at CipherTechs, a New York City-based RedSeal partner, said RedSeal's push to add more marketing will be a big benefit for partners.

"They are a great partner. Anything they do to increase their reach and help get their word out there further is going to be positive for us in the channel," Alicandri said.

While he didn't know Parrish personally, Alicandri said companies like NetApp, where she led marketing for three years as CMO, have "widely regarded" marketing programs.

"When we see our partners do something to increase awareness it makes our jobs a lot easier. I'm happy to hear they're doing something [more around marketing] - that's great," Alicandri said.