The name ‘Airgap’ comes from our ambition to offer perfect isolation and security for all enterprises across IT and OT: Ritesh Agrawal of Airgap Networks

The Silicon Review

“Airgap has been granted 12 patents by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) thus far, with several more currently in the pipeline.”

Airgap Networks is the innovation leader in specialized security for the modern enterprise. It has pioneered agentless segmentation and access for enterprise networks, delivering enhanced protection, lower costs, and step-function simplification. Inspired by the built-in security of telco network architecture, Airgap transforms today’s patchwork of vendors, policies, consoles, and complicated traffic routing into an easy to use, unified managed SaaS solution, removing complexity for security administrators and users. Airgap integrates seamlessly into your existing network security stack including one-click integration with SSE providers.

Airgap is completely agentless, deploys in hours, and is the most cost-effective way to instantly reduce risk and improve compliance for any enterprise network. It’s widely deployed in 30 countries and over 4,000 sites, holds 12 patents, and leads the industry in both ease of use and level of protection for critical infrastructure.

Airgap is a Silicon Valley startup funded by top VC firms including Storm Ventures, Cervin, Sorenson, Aspenwood Ventures, and Engineering Capital

Founded in 2019, the Airgap founding team has years of experience building some of the most successful carrier, industrial, and enterprise grade infrastructure products including routing, switching, and security platforms.

“During our careers, we observed that enterprise network infrastructure had reached a complexity tipping point where traditional cyber security solutions were failing to stop cyber breaches. Security was an afterthought when enterprise LANs were conceived and these high value networks are now a primary source of threat vector, compliance hurdles, and cost,” said Ritesh Agrawal, CEO and Co-Founder.

Although billions of dollars are being spent on solutions designed for the needs of corporate IT, enterprise environments with operating technology networks lack similar protection. Airgap was formed with the mission to simplify and secure business critical infrastructure.

“We believe that removing architectural complexity is always the right answer for security teams looking to improve effectiveness and ROI,” he said.

Consumed as a managed SaaS, Airgap shrinks attack surface, lowers cost, and improves business uptime. It’s fully cloud-managed and deploys seamlessly into the existing networking stack with secure access, microsegmentation, and asset discovery built in. Airgap is completely agentless, deploys in hours, and is the most cost-effective way to instantly reduce risk and improve compliance for any enterprise network.

The company protects over 4,000 sites in 30 countries, including some of the largest critical network infrastructure networks in the world, and integrates easily into your existing network and security stack for phased deployment.

Entrepreneurial Spirit

The hardest part of any start up is to find a truly innovative response to a major industry problem. The problem itself was easy, enterprise customers were stuck with a 20-year-old network and security architecture. Every year customers were spending more on a sprawl of security tools, but they were also being breached more. That’s not what winning looks like.

Network and security transformations are always architectural, and the Airgap team was inspired by the security and simplicity of the telco mobile infrastructure, where breaches are rare, costs are low, and scaling is high. Telcos achieve this by isolating every device in “a network of 1”, pursuing a segmentation-based security model rather than a perimeter-based model. From the elegance and security of “a network of 1” Airgap was born.

With the security paradigm in hand the next big challenge was the complexity of DIY solutions so common in enterprise networks. “Every customer we spoke to told us that it took months to do basic security tasks like segmentation, and that their security posture was always compromised by a lack of resources, skills, and time. We dedicated the company to delivering an architecture where simplicity and security are built in. Our customers routinely tell us they would have to hire entire teams to do what Airgap can deliver in just hours,” said Ritesh.

“We’re a customer-first, innovation-driven company. Airgap has been granted 12 patents by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) thus far, with several more currently in the pipeline,” he continued.

Purpose

The Airgap founding team has a deep background in high scale security businesses primarily focused on telcos and large enterprises. It was during this time that the team recognized the industry was losing the cybersecurity battle—with security infrastructure spend increasing each year, yet breaches and damages continuing to rise. Realizing the need for a more sustainable solution, the team saw an opportunity to apply VC-led innovation to the industry.

True digital transformations are architectural transformations. After observing the effectiveness of mobile/telco architecture in combatting malware spread while offering complete network and security infrastructure at a fraction of the cost and with consumption-based pricing, the Airgap team was inspired to apply this same approach to enterprise security. The mobile/telco architecture offers perfect isolation and no lateral spread, even if a device is infected, which led to the creation of Airgap Networks. “The name ‘Airgap’ comes from our ambition to offer perfect isolation and security for all enterprises across IT and OT,” the CEO said.

“We believe in our hearts that the cybersecurity war can and must be won. What does winning look like? When breaches are down and so is infrastructure spend. To accomplish this, a generational shift in security architecture is required. Airgap is that new architecture,” he continued.

Growth

Airgap is growing rapidly in critical infrastructure as enterprises discover there is a simpler, more secure way to safeguard their businesses.

Airgap deploys in phases, typically hospital by hospital or factory by factory. Because the Airgap deployment is hitless, the velocity of the global expansion inside existing accounts was surprising and has greatly contributed to the growth of the company. This rapid growth reinforces the simplified nature of the company, as central IT teams find it easy to show to internal clients and easy to adopt across their global footprint. The speed of this expansion tornado, driven by step-function simplification, was “the turning point” where Airgap began to see significant growth.

Speed of adoption is the best KPI. That means the user community likes the solution and so does corporate IT and the networking team. It means the solution does its job and is both easy to use and easy to manage.

“After our initial sales successes in major critical infrastructure companies, we also saw very rapid expansion across their global footprint,” the CEO said.

Impact

Breaches are inevitable. Phishing attacks, stolen credentials, and bad actors commonly bypass perimeters. Many enterprises default to shutting down the entire compromised VLAN during an attack, disrupting essential traffic and halting operations. Random alerts aren’t helping; in the chaos of incomplete information during an attack, how do you respond?

As a real-world example, Tillys, a specialty retailer with 250 stores across 33 states, wanted to reduce enterprise risk and attack surface while achieving IT compliance. Tillys also needed a solution with the absolute minimum impact to their running network.

With Airgap, Tillys achieved IT compliance and reduced their attack surface in record time. 100% of corporate endpoints across data centers, corporate HQs, and retail stores were segmented and protected from lateral threats. The company also implemented secure access for their hybrid workforce and external partner/contractors and configured a Ransomware Kill Switch to protect critical assets.

Guido Solares, Director of Information Security and Compliance at Tillys said, “We went from the first meeting, to becoming a customer, to segmenting our entire footprint in just under a week. That is unheard of.”

“Airgap protects over 4,000 sites in 30 countries, including some of the largest critical network infrastructure networks in the world, and integrates easily into your existing network and security stack for phased deployment.”