San Diego Union Tribune: People to Watch, Breach's Marc Shinbrood

August 5, 2005

Age: 55
Position: Chief executive
Company: Breach Security

Breach Security got its start last year when it purchased the assets of Gilian Technologies, an Israeli computer security firm. It has received about $8 million in venture capital funding. Shinbrood became the company's CEO in March. The Carlsbad company offers three products aimed at large corporations and organizations that have Web sites. The company's main product, WebDefend, is hardware that attaches to a company's computer network. It has a built-in "intelligence engine" that Breach says can detect activities on the network that are out of the ordinary and may potentially signal a security breach.

It is being tested by companies invited to participate in a pilot program. Beginning Aug. 15, Breach plans to open testing to other interested companies.

Breach employs 35 people. Besides its headquarters in Carlsbad, it has sales offices in Chicago and Tampa, Fla. and a sales office and research-and-development facility in Herzliya, Israel.

Why does your company exist?

It exists because customers have to address the unique challenges of securing their Web applications, and their existing infrastructure doesn't do that. So we had to come up with a new and better way to do it. What we do is minimize the risk associated with doing business on the Internet.

How do your products differ from other computer security technologies?

The way computer security works is it's always reactive. Basically, you install anti-virus software on your machine and, every week, you update your database of virus signatures. What we've done is take that a step further by building in an intelligence engine that can not only be updated with new signatures but can also look for anything funny, or out of the ordinary, occurring. We can determine this anomalous behavior is occurring and alert people about it. It's proactive.

Who is your competition?

There are always people who say they do similar things. To tell you the truth, all of the companies in computer security would say they do something similar as us. But, in point of fact, they don't.

What aspects of your job do you brag about?

What I brag about is how I have a lot of young, bright people working for me. Being the old guy, I get to give them direction, and it's fun to watch them proceed and climb walls that they didn't think they could climb. It's just fun to see young individuals get excited. I've got a wonderful team.

What about your job keeps you up at night?

The idea that people really don't believe that they need protection until they get hacked – that's what keeps me up at night. We have to go out and tell people they need this product, and they say, "Oh, we don't have any problems."

Tell us something interesting about yourself.

Growing up in Chicago, my father was a teacher who spoke seven languages. He was a biblical student and taught philosophy. He said to me, "You're going to learn Hebrew." I learned Hebrew and French and English.

When I got this job, I was actually interviewing for another job. The interviewers said, "Wait a minute. You speak Hebrew, you know computer security and software, you've managed software companies, and you've been in the business 35 years. We have a different company for you." And that's when they put me into this job.

– KATHRYN BALINT