Startup Looks to Solve Identity Crisis

Security startup Caymas Systems emerged from two years in stealth mode today with $37 million in funding and a range of access gateways (see Caymas Bags $37M, Launches Products).

Caymass area of expertise is identity management, which means ensuring that only designated users, both internal and external, can access specific systems and applications.

This is a topic of increasing importance to enterprises, as online identity theft, or "phishing," as it is known, is already a major problem for many businesses. In addition, companies are under pressure to meet the data privacy requirements of legislation such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA).

As a result, identity management is fast emerging as a hot technology area. Last week Computer Associates International Inc. (CA) (NYSE: CA) acquired Caymas's rival Netegrity for $430 million. Clearly, there is money to be made from identity-management technology (see CA Nets Netegrity for $430M).

So, who are the people behind Caymas? The company was founded in 2002 by Terence Brown and Bob Bortolotto, former execs at Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) and optical-transport specialist Cerent Corporation. Brown is now Caymas’s CEO and Bortolotto is vice president of hardware engineering and systems. For the record, Cerent was acquired by Cisco for $7 billion in 1999.