History

SafeMashups Inc. was started in Silicon Valley by security industry veteran Ravi Ganesan. Ramakrishna Menon (now an Advisor to the Company) helped design many of the early prototypes. The Company then spent a year being incubated at the Institute for Cyber Security at The University of Texas at San Antonio, where Chief Architects Erhan Kartaltepe and Todd Wolff, worked with Ravi to further develop the technology and build the software currently available on this web site.

The Company has now spun out of incubation and is working closely with various partners (including VeriSign, Entrust, Comodo, DigiCert, etc.) to make its core innovation of MashSSL an industry standard through the MashSSL Alliance. The core technology has also been applied to cloud security. The SafeMashups Cloud Trust Model, and the resulting SafeMashups Cloud Trust Broker augment MashSSL and together they provide a powerful way of enhancing the security of the new (multi-party) Internet.

Advisors

SafeMashups is fortunate to have a strong set of industry Advisors who have been closely involved in guiding the Company's direction. The Advisors include:

  • Dan Cornell, Principal, Denim Group.
  • John Dickson, Principal, Denim Group.
  • Bret Hartman, Chief Technology Officer, RSA, The Security Division of EMC.
  • Vadim Lander, Chief Identity Architect, Oracle.
  • Chris Lawless, Managing Partner, CIRRUS Capital Partners and Managing Director, Hunter
    Wise Securities.
  • Trell Rohovit, CEO, Venafi.
  • Elizabeth Safran, Principal, Looking Glass Public Relations
  • Al Stadnicki, Partner, Antonelli, Terry, Stout & Kraus, LLP.
  • Ram Varadarajan, CEO, Arcot

Ravi Ganesan, Founder & CEO

He was previously the Founder and CEO of TriCipher, a supplier of authentication products, from 2000 to mid 2006. During his tenure there he raised angel and Series A funding ($5 million) and brought the product to market with initial customers. He steered the Company through the technology depression of 2002-2004 by forming a unique alliance with a Japanese partner, during which time TriCipher added additional customers including one of the largest banks in Europe and some of the largest healthcare companies in the US. Based on this success, in late 2004 he raised Series B funding ($10 million) from leading investors, including INTEL Capital, and relaunched the Company. In 2005 TriCipher, signed as customers some of the most marquee names in financial services. Based on this success Ravi positioned the Company to focus solely on financial services. The timing proved propitious as soon thereafter new government regulations (FFIEC) led to the rapid rise in the demand for authentication products. With a proven product and marquee references, by mid 2006,TriCipher was able to harvest more than its fair share of the "multifactor authentication" market and at the time was considered one of the leaders in the space. In mid 2006 he stepped aside as CEO to continue as Founder, but after a transition chose to move on.

Prior to TriCipher Ravi was Chief Technology Officer at CheckFree and was part of the leadership team that grew the Company explosively from about $40 million in revenue to over $400 million in revenue, and to cash flow profitability. This growth was achieved both through several successful acquisitions as well as strong organic growth. By the end of this period CheckFree was far and away the most dominant player in market share and product leadership in the on-line billing and payment market. In his early years at CheckFree, Ravi focused primarily on running the operations of the current systems, consolidating the operations of acquired companies, and building the new Genesis platform (which today serves 15 million consumers). In the latter part of his career at CheckFree he was promoted to Vice Chairman and was focused on opening up non traditional channels such as portals, and in developing new payment products. CheckFree was acquired by Fiserv for more than $4 billion.

Prior to CheckFree Ravi served various roles at Verizon Communications including eventually serving as Vice President for Distributed Operations where he managed a team of over 500 people providing support for mission critical systems. Both at Verizon and at CheckFree, the CSO function reported to Ravi, and he spent nearly a decade viewing enterprise security from the perspective of the buyer.

As a researcher and inventor he has published over a dozen refereed papers, has seventeen granted US patents and additional International patents, all in the areas of cryptography, billing and payment systems. He also has about forty pending patents. He has over a dozen patents in security, and every security patent he has filed for has been granted, and none have been subsequently challenged.

Ravi has three degrees in Computer Science: he received his Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, his M.S. from the University of Maryland Baltimore County, MD and his B.S. from Anna University, Madras, India. More information about Ravi can be found at www.findravi.com.

Lynn Terwoerds, co-Founder & Vice President Business Development

As Vice President of Business Development for SafeMashups, Lynn Terwoerds works to bring the SafeMashups Cloud Trust Model and the resulting SafeMashups Cloud Trust Broker to market.  In conjunction with MashSSL, they provide a powerful way to enhance the security of the new multi-party Internet. Further, Lynn is an active member of the Cloud Security Alliance and leads a cloud security metrics working group.

Before joining SafeMashups, Lynn Terwoerds was the head of Security Architecture and Standards for Barclays global retail and commercial bank based in London. Prior to that she spent over eight years with Microsoft leading efforts in security response, Trustworthy Computing and critical infrastructure protection. Before entering the software industry, she worked with various solutions integrators providing consulting services to Fortune 100 companies, giving her 20 years overall IT industry experience. She is a CISSP, CEH and holds a Master's degree in Classics.  When not thinking about information systems security, she is an avid blue water sailor.