ZeroFox CEO James Foster: IDX deal will be incrementally valuable to company, clients

The widespread digitalization, which accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, has underscored the need for effective technologies to protect digital assets. ZeroFox is a leading provider of cybersecurity solutions that identify, manage and mitigate threats. Among its many innovatiave solutions, the Maryland-based technology firm’s patented SaaS technology effectively protects content shared on social media platforms.

In an email conversation with AlphaStreet, ZeroFox’s founder and chief executive officer James Foster provided insights into the new trends in cybersecuirty and the company’s growth strategy.

Please tell us about your products, and how they are different from legacy cybersecurity solutions

ZeroFox is the leader in external cybersecurity, protecting organizations against threats across the internet. While traditional cybersecurity solutions focus on internal security controls, building firewalls and agents to secure internal networks, enterprise assets, data and customer engagement have moved externally. ZeroFox was founded to help enterprises address this new attack surface, preventing, disrupting and responding to external threats. The ZeroFox Platform’s global intelligence collection combs through posts, sites and content at internet scale, detecting and analyzing hidden threats to brands, data, assets and people, from fraudulent domains to fake profiles. Expert analysts and threat hunters serve as an extension of an organization’s internal security team, embedded in the criminal underground and always ready to take action on behalf of the customer to disrupt adversaries.

What is the reason behind taking the SPAC route to go public?

By merging with L&F to become a public company, we immediately elevate the resources available to us as we continue on our path to provide our customers with the leading available external cybersecurity services on the market. We believe this highly strategic business decision is the best course of action to take in this current market environment because it provides all the benefits that come from an IPO and being publicly traded.

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How is the business going to benefit from the IDX deal?

IDX is the nation’s largest provider of data breach response services through its proprietary digital privacy protection platform. Together, IDX and ZeroFox will provide complete external threat protection capabilities and breach response services, a comprehensive offering for companies protecting against, or responding to, external threats. The combined SaaS business will have over 650 employees and serve nearly 2,000 customers including five of the Fortune Top 10 and the largest companies in media, technology, retail, and energy. Collectively, approximately 90% of revenues will be platform subscriptions. The platform processes billions of data elements and protects tens of millions of digital assets around the world. ZeroFox and IDX have had a long-standing partnership based on shared values, a vision for a safer digital world, and strong alignment on the market opportunity. There is a natural connection between the brands, and this acquisition will be incrementally valuable to both ZeroFox and all of our collective customers.

Can you share your views on overseas expansion and potential challenges in that area?

Australia and New Zealand are just the latest examples of ZeroFox’s global expansion. More than a third of our employees are based outside of the United States, and we continue to look across borders for the best talent in the world as we build our team. There is a myriad of challenges when it comes to global expansion. In my mind, the biggest challenge is hiring in a new market. It’s critical to get those first few hires right. In my experience, good talent rarely follows poor talent and it’s critical to get the right people in place to effectively establish a genuine local company culture and meet performance expectations.

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When it comes to business expansion in the long term, what is your strategy to meet capital needs?

As a public company, we’ll now have access to the open capital markets, giving us the opportunity to accelerate our growth plans. Our focus will be on executing our plan, delighting our customers and continuously increasing our pace of innovation to stay one step ahead of cyber thieves around the world.

Where do you see ZeroFox five years from now?

While there is no crystal ball, I’m excited about what’s on the horizon for ZeroFox. With the acquisition of IDX we are on the verge of becoming a multi-category cybersecurity leader, operating from a unified enterprise-grade SaaS platform. Our platform will enable customers to rely on a single source of truth to protect them from every external attack vector, which is incredibly exciting to us.