HairClub was founded in 1976 by Seymour "Sy" Sperling and is probably most remembered by people of a certain generation for his famous TV commercials, “I’m not only the Hair Club president, but I’m also a client.”
Then, in 1978, Remington Shavers launched an ad campaign featuring their president Victor Kiam saying, “When my wife bought me a Remington shaver, I was so impressed I bought the company.”
Turns out the customer-to-CEO journey isn’t just for people passionate about hair restoration or removal. In 2023, I proudly accepted the position of CEO at iVerify after kicking the tires as a customer.
Like many security professionals, my career path took several unexpected twists and turns. I studied physics before I found myself in information security and I founded my first commercial cybersecurity company over a decade ago.
Eventually, I co-founded a global non-profit organization. Right off the bat, we had to address the fact that threat actors were targeting the personal phones of our employees, devices that were used for personal as well as business communications. The commercial spyware market was in its infancy then, but already products from NSO Group were being used by governments to surveil journalists, human rights activists, and other individuals they viewed as threats to their power. We were concerned for the welfare of our team members and the protection of sensitive intellectual property.
We were serious about security, but our organization was also a firm advocate for personal privacy. So, security solutions that couldn’t ensure the privacy of our employees – including those requiring installation of a management profile on personal devices – were immediately off the table. We also dismissed options that weren’t user-friendly, easy to deploy, or able to quickly assess and then monitor devices on demand for advanced compromises. Our leadership team was concerned that rolling out a solution for our BYOD fleet would take weeks or even longer.
But I had heard about iVerify through the security community. It had a great reputation, so we decided to check it out.
It just works
Within 5 minutes of setting up iVerify Enterprise, we could immediately see the overall security posture of our BYOD mobile fleet, including whether each user was keeping their device’s operating system up to date. Most importantly for us at the time, we could also immediately determine whether any devices were impacted by Pegasus or other spyware, or whether anyone had jailbroken or otherwise modified their phones to make them less secure. And this was on both iPhones and Androids.
“iVerify protects the most important people in my life.”
iVerify just worked. It immediately made our organization safer. It was our easy button for enforcing OS updates on mobile, reminding employees to reboot their devices, remove sensitive metadata from photos before sharing, and providing simple step-by-step guides on how to effectively use the phone’s native security and privacy features.
We got all of this without ever deploying an MDM solution and I saw how easy it was for our team to use iVerify in the field. I trusted iVerify to protect my team and began recommending the consumer version to friends and family. And our employees were actually thrilled to have it! They felt safer – it was as much a benefit for them as it was for us as an organization.
When the opportunity arose to lead iVerify through the next chapter of its evolution as an independent company, I jumped at the chance. It’s not often that you get to steer the future of a product that means so much to you. I’m committed to its success because iVerify protects the most important people in my life.
Danny Rogers, iVerify co-founder and CEO
