Yaniv Vardi announced as Claroty’s new CEO

Cyber company Claroty Ltd., part of the Team8 venture group, announced on Monday that it has appointed Yaniv Vardi as the company’s new CEO. Vardi is replacing Thorsten Freitag, who took on the role in October 2019. Vardi was formerly the CEO of Panoramic Power until it was acquired by energy company Centrica and Vardi was appointed managing director at Centrica Business Solutions.

Claroty develops security solutions for industry and infrastructure. Since it was founded by Team8 venture group in 2015, it has raised a total of $100 million with backing by Team8, Bessemer Venture Partners, Temasek Holdings and others.

Speaking to Calcalist, Vardi said he aims to make Claroty a company that offers a comprehensive solution for the needs of the industry, also at the operational level: “We want to lead the market across all aspects of the industry and not just in security, to address all needs, such as information security, network visibility, risk management and of course remote access, which has become much more significant recently. I want us to be a one-stop-shop for all the operational technology of the industrial sector.”

"We have competitors, but no other company provides a solution for both operations and network visibility. Most of our competitors deal only with cybersecurity and do not enable remote access and the ability to fix internal failures. Our uniqueness is our ability to offer a company everything it needs instead of having to adopt a variety of products."

Vardi added that he plans to lead Claroty into new sectors such as automotive, pharma, health, and others.

Vardi said that Claroty is growing amid the coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak and instead of laying workers off or sending them on unpaid leave, it is in the midst of expansion, aiming to recruit 20 new employees this year.

"We are living in a different world than we were just six months ago, there is no market that has not experienced massive changes including the industrial cybersecurity market. Nevertheless, Claroty has been remarkably successful with its recent quarterly results, a strong investor community, technological innovation, and mature management," said Nadav Zafrir, founding partner and CEO of Team8.

In response to the prior CEO leaving after less than a year in the position, the company said: “The previous CEO Thorsten Freitag did an excellent job during his time at Claroty and we wish him all the best. That said, our board and investors are always seeking to employ a winning team and though replacing a CEO is always a tough decision, a strong board does not shy away from bold decisions in order to do what is best for the long term growth of the company.”