New Leadership at Verdasys: Accomplished Entrepreneur Jim Ricotta Joins Company as President & CEO

WALTHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Verdasys, the leading provider of Enterprise Information Protection (EIP) solutions for the Global 2000, announced today that Jim Ricotta has joined the company as President and Chief Executive Officer. Dan Keshian, Verdasys’ Chairman of the Board, said that: “Jim is charged with positioning the company for its next phase of growth while maintaining and extending the company’s leadership in the data protection and encryption markets.”

"Verdasys was founded on a data loss incident, the type of incident that now is a significant risk to all of the G2000 companies around the world. With Digital Guardian, Verdasys delivers the industry’s most successful information protection platform to over 200 customers, including global industry leaders in insurance, finance, manufacturing, energy, technology, healthcare, and government,” said Mr. Keshian. “On the heels of a successful and profitable first half of 2010, adding 12 new Global 2000 customers, now is the time to transition Verdasys for the next phase of its growth and maturity by focusing on operating and financial fundamentals, as well as quality and solution delivery. “We are very excited to be adding Jim Ricotta as our new CEO,” he added, “Jim’s proven leadership and rich experience will be a major factor in Verdasys’ future success.”

“Verdasys is the global technology leader in Enterprise Information Protection – forging an entirely new and incredibly effective way to protect sensitive information while enabling greater collaboration across the enterprise,” said Mr. Ricotta. “There are extraordinary opportunities ahead for Verdasys and I am eager to lead the company through this exciting juncture in its continuing transformation. I look forward to working with the Verdasys management team and its talented employees to design and deliver the next wave of game-changing Enterprise Information Protection solutions for our customers.”

Jim joins Verdasys with over 25 years of experience in the information technology field as a CEO, board member and Fortune 500 division GM. Jim has held the CEO and President position at Azuki Systems, DataPower Technologies, and SightPath, Inc. He has also been a Vice President and Business Unit General Manager at IBM and Cisco. His functional experience includes Engineering, Product Management, Marketing, Sales, and General Management. He has built management teams, brought products to market, acquired marquee customers and enjoys a long track record of growth within his positions. He has successfully built and sold companies in emerging markets to Cisco and IBM for $800M and $100M respectively. Jim holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Cornell and an MBA from Harvard.

Speaking on behalf of the entire board, Dan expressed his sincere thanks to Verdasys’ founders; Allen Michels, former Chairman of the Board and Seth Birnbaum, former CEO. “The Board of Directors and I would like to express our sincere gratitude to Allen Michels and Seth Birnbaum for the services they rendered to the organization over these last seven years. Allen, Seth and the founding team took the company from an idea to technology leader and from a single customer to over two hundred as Verdasys became the market leader in Enterprise Information Protection with millions of seats licensed and deployed throughout the world. Their incredible success speaks for itself.”

About Verdasys

Verdasys (www.verdasys.com) provides Enterprise Information Protections (EIP) solutions that secure proprietary and sensitive data and the integrity of business processes essential for Global 2000 companies to successfully compete in today’s highly collaborative and mobile environments. Digital Guardian, with millions of agents licensed and deployed, is a centrally managed data security platform that discovers, classifies, monitors, controls and encrypts sensitive information at rest, in use and in motion across desktops, laptops, mobile devices, email, web transactions, terminal servers and enterprise applications. Verdasys customers are the global leaders in financial services, insurance, technology, manufacturing, and healthcare industries around the world. Companies serious about information protection choose Verdasys.