By Jim Tholen, Managing Partner

We were very excited to hear Microsoft announce its acquisition of ReFirm labs. You can view the press release here.

We want to congratulate co-founders Terry Dunlap and Peter Eacmen; CEO Derick Naef and the ReFirm team for having a vision, executing on the vision, and building great value - value clearly recognized by Microsoft.

ReFirm’s roots are from the NSA and both offensive and defensive cybersecurity efforts. Terry and Peter saw that while companies and governments had invested billions in securing their networks, very little effort had been made to secure end devices on IP networks - the boring stuff like IP phones, printers, surveillance cameras, etc. 

They followed a freemium model and their Binwalk application quickly became an industry standard. They have had much success with their commercial, managed Centrifuge product (built on Binwalk).

Microsoft shares the security concerns that drive the ReFirm team, and to quote their blog, “ReFirm’s firmware analysis technology will advance Microsoft’s existing capabilities to help secure IoT and OT devices via Azure Defender for IoT....Together, we will provide device builders and customers the ability to both discover, protect, and assess device risk both at the firmware and network level and then patch devices with an easy-to-use cloud-based solution…”

We got involved with Derick, Terry, Peter and team in March 2020 just as we were getting going with True North. They were client # 2! It was great fun for us to work with a great team with great technology focused on an area of security exposure that few of us had worried that much about (we are glad they worried about it!). We worked with ReFirm, helping them think through product packaging, pricing models in the freemium world, and go to market efforts especially with device vendors and service providers.

“One of the great things working with True North over the past year was the breadth of experience Mike, Scott and Jim bring to the table to help startups like ReFirm Labs navigate their journey. Each of them has domain expertise from the start, scaling, exiting, as well as being on the other side as an acquirer which always led to valuable input to whatever challenge we faced as a company.”

Interested in engaging with us? Check out our website here and connect with us on LinkedIn! You can reach us directly at info@truenorthadvisory.us to learn how to find your company’s True North.