Allegis Capital Appoints Four New Venture Partners

PALO ALTO, CA--(Marketwired - Aug 6, 2013) - Allegis Capital, a prominent early-stage venture capital firm with a long-standing and active focus on investments in cyber security startups, announced the appointment of four security executives who have joined Allegis Capital as Venture Partners.

The new partners expand Allegis Capital's expertise and depth in cyber security, an active area of early-stage investing and primary focus of the firm for more than 10 years.

The executives include: Nawaf Bitar, senior vice president and general manager of the Security Business Unit of Juniper Networks; Dr. Hossein Eslambolchi, Founder and CEO of CyberFlow Analytics, cyber security analytics company; Tom Gillis, the co-founder and CEO of a new secure software platform company in stealth mode and formerly vice president and general manager of Cisco Systems' Security Technology Group; and Jeffrey Williams, vice president of worldwide sales and business development at FireEye Inc.

Greater Focus on Cyber Security for Allegis Capital

"Cyber Security has been both an area of investment focus and investment success for Allegis for a number of years. We have had the great pleasure of working with all four of our new Venture Partners as entrepreneurs over the past 10 years. Their formal addition to our team as Venture Partners recognizes our past successes together while more tightly integrating their considerable expertise and market perspective into our cyber security investment initiatives," said Robert Ackerman, the founder of Allegis Capital and one of the firm's Managing Directors. "The growing importance of cyber security innovation and the incredibly complex nature of that innovation raises the bar for the level of expertise that we want to bring to the market and our cyber security-focused portfolio companies. At the same time, as former entrepreneurs ourselves and early-stage investors, we know there is no substitute for experience in building cyber security companies. Collectively, Tom, Nawaf, Hossein and Jeff bring unprecedented expertise to our efforts to build the next generation of cyber security innovators as we stand on the front line of arguably the most complex and expansive conflict confronting the global economy."

All four of the new Venture Partners continue their respective leadership responsibilities with their current companies while also serving as members and advisors to the investing General Partner for Allegis Capital.

Additional Partner Background

Before joining Juniper Networks, Bitar was vice president of engineering and operations of security technology at Cisco Systems. He joined Cisco in 2007 when it acquired IronPort Systems (formerly an Allegis portfolio company), a provider of email and web security, where he had been senior vice president of engineering. He was previously an executive at Network Appliance, Silicon Graphics and Apollo Computer.

Before founding CyberFlow Analytics, Dr. Eslambolchi was both global chief technology officer and global chief information officer for AT&T Corp. and also CEO of AT&T Labs. Dr. Eslambolchi is a member of the board of Clearwire and a member of the board of trustees for Shiraz University School of Medical Sciences in New York City in addition to his advisory work with Allegis portfolio companies Solera Networks and PureWave Networks.

Before co-founding his new stealth mode security company, Tom Gillis was the vice president and general manager of Cisco Systems security unit and the senior vice president of marketing and part of the founding team at IronPort Systems. Before that, he was senior vice president and general manager at IBEAM Broadcasting (also formerly an Allegis portfolio company). He has also held leadership roles at Silicon Graphics, Boston Consulting Group and Raytheon Corp.

Before joining FireEye, a leader in malware protection systems, Jeffrey Williams was global vice president of sales for innovative technologies at Cisco Systems. Previously, he served as the Vice President of Sales for IronPort Systems, and as Vice President of Sales at IntruVert Networks, a developer of intrusion detection and prevention systems acquired by McAfee.

About Allegis Capital

Allegis Capital is an early-stage Silicon Valley venture capital firm that invests in disruptive infrastructure technologies including cyber security. Current Allegis cyber security portfolio companies include Symplified, Shape Security and Synack. Bracket Computing a new secure software platform company in stealth mode is also part of the Allegis portfolio. Allegis's Security portfolio company, Solera Networks, was recently acquired by Blue Coat Systems. Founded in 1996, the firm has more than $600M capital under management and has been active in cyber security investing for more than 10 years. www.allegiscapital.com