Founder and CEO for the past 20 years, Yuri Maksimov, who ran Positive Technologies for almost 20 years, will become head of the future board of directors
Positive Technologies today announced that longtime shareholder and former managing director, Denis Baranov has been named the new CEO of the company. He succeeds founder Yuri Maksimov, who has served in that role for the past two decades and will take on new responsibilities with the board of directors. Moving forward, the goal is for the company to make new technological breakthroughs, expand its international presence and protect the interests of minority shareholders after the company goes public.
"My departure from the position of CEO will allow me to focus on developing the idea of result-oriented information security, without limiting myself to one company. The point is to ensure that events that a business, industry or even country define as completely unacceptable are avoided, even if a potential cybercriminal manages to penetrate the infrastructure under protection. The second goal that will be achieved by appointing the new CEO is clear distinction of roles. It's hard to be demanding towards yourself when you're the CEO. From now on, I will act as an advocate for shareholders and will be sufficiently demanding towards the company," explained Yuri Maksimov.
Mr. Baranov has been working for Positive Technologies since 2010, when he started as a technical expert and web application security researcher. He’s since been engaged in the development of three Positive Technologies products, PT Application Inspector, PT Application Firewall, and PT Industrial Security Incident Manager, from concept elaboration to product development. Today, these products account for 30% to 50% of the Russian information security market in their respective segments. He is also part of the SCADA Strangelove non-profit research organization, which is focused on security assessments of industrial control systems (ICS). He is one of the creative forces behind The Standoff cyber-range, and author of numerous research projects. He helped develop the annual Positive Hack Days international forum.
" Our approach to management is different from what is common in the industry. To start with, Positive Technologies CEO has become an elected position. In future, the choice will depend on a stage of the company's development and its objectives. Currently, we need to make a breakthrough in terms of technologies and public offering, which is why our CEO must be a visionary. When the time comes to scale up the results, this position can be taken over by another top manager who has more potential in this area," said Denis Baranov.
In his new role, Mr. Baranov has identified three corporate priorities:
- Increase technological breakthroughs, particularly through meta-products, such as maxPatrol O2, which enhances automatic protection from hacker attacks. Thanks to built-in automation mechanisms and AI advances, maxPatrol 02 reduces the number of experts needed to counter cyberattacks.
- Scale up international presence: The 2021 revenue plan anticipates 40 to 50 percent growth over 2020, and a new technology focus.
- Launch an IPO in late 2021 or early 2022:. The unique feature of the company's public offering concept is a special approach to working with future shareholders. The shareholders are expected to include cybersecurity and high-tech specialists (first of all, natural persons) to build a long-term cooperation with them and leverage their ideas to foster future development of Positive Technologies.
Mr. Baranov added: "The cybersecurity market is changing, and the number of individual investors is drastically increasing. Collectively, their activity can be compared to that of traditional investment funds. People are interested in investing in promising industries, especially high tech and cybersecurity. Positive Technologies capital has been evaluated at approximately $2.5 billion while preparing our initial public offering. Our plans for robust development will allow us to become the largest and the most interesting private investment partner on the Russian cybersecurity market.”
