Ghost Systems, Inc. (Ghost) was formed in January 2014. They are a privately held, Nevada company headquartered in Incline Village, Nevada, with offices in Nevada, Washington, California, Utah and Virginia. Their founders have over 475 years combined experience developing leading edge security solutions between them.
Their Mission: It is their responsibility to authoritatively develop future-proof cyber-security technologies and services that are robust and secure no matter how much money is spent or computing power is used in an effort to break them.
Their Vision: Because of the technologies that Ghost Systems builds and deploys, today’s Internet users will be secure when communicating information across the network and that ultimately, The Internet of Things (IoE) will become a robust, secure and ubiquitous network of connected things which enables the World’s data moving across it to be “safe” from cyber-thieves.
Ghost’s Primary Business Model includes several major components:
· They implemented a Build, Buy, Partner strategy for both technology and business. This strategy provides Maximum Flexibility in ley areas of our business.
· They adopted a Multi-Tiered Pricing Strategy that includes; Subscription Services (SaaS), Product Sales w/Annual Renewal, Enterprise Licenses Where Applicable and we adopted a Multi-Channel Sales Strategy including; Strategic Partners, Resellers, OEM’s, and the Internet.
· Their tactical target markets represent a combined revenue opportunity of over $645M in 2016 and our longer-term strategic target markets represent combined revenue opportunity of between $2.5 – $4 trillion according to several major US and international research firms.
In an interview with Ghost Systems’s Don Ritzman, he reveals the fundamentals of his firm’s mission as well as his own role as a business leader. He also lifts the lid on the biggest challenges and opportunities facing the cyber security technologies industry at present not to mention what the future holds for his firm.
Please give us an insight into your role as CEO of your company?
My role as CEO is to provide vision for the organization, to make sure I have talented people who can take vision and turn it into functional solutions for our customers, and then to represent that vision and the specific work that we are doing to accomplish that vision to the industry.
As a business leader, how do you ensure that your visions are executed across all sectors of your company?
A key to successful execution is smart, hard-working people in key leadership roles within the organization. With the right people in the right positions, the organization functions like an efficient machine and we are able to successfully execute programs that meet our customer’s requirements and grow the organization.
Tell us about your firm’s mission. What techniques do you use to achieve this?
We intend to change forever the fundamental dynamics of the war between cyber criminals and the good guys, making the Internet or any other private or public network a safer place for people and businesses to interact, having a positive impact across the World.
What would say are the biggest challenges and opportunities facing your industry at present?
Security architectures largely grew organically over the past ten years as organizations addressed a variety of new threats and tactics. This has resulted in an army of new deployed technologies like firewalls, IDS/IPS, network proxies, gateways, sandboxes, endpoint suites, etc. Over time, this patchwork approach has become more difficult to manage and significantly less effective at blocking legitimate threats. Existing cyber-security problems telegraph what’s needed for security in the future. Specifically, enterprises need a comprehensive solution that offers scalability, protects against both known and unknown threats, automates manual processes, and replaces a patchwork of ineffective tools with an integrated set of security services.
When working in an industry that is constantly changing, what does your firm do to ensure that they are at the forefront of any emerging developments?
Ghost has a world-class business and technology team including several of the finest developers of cyber security technologies in the world today. Several distinguished technology team members include; the author of the NSA’s Orange Book, a distinguished cryptography and identity expert, the designer of the first-ever distributed OTP and a noted former CIA cryptography expert. We work closely with major universities and national and international research labs and continually review new technologies as they are developed so that we are always aware of the latest emerging technologies and trends in the industry.
How do you develop and maintain the standards you set for yourselves?
Primarily we use Six Sigma however, we complement that with internally developed processes that are more directly applicable to our specific business that are not readily addressed by the six sigma process.
Tell us about your approach to hiring your staff. How do you attract the best talent in the industry to your firm?
We tend to attract our key talent via word of mouth. We don’t openly advertise and generally don’t use head hunters as they tend to find the “second-level” capable candidates. Once we identify a prime candidate, we take a long time to explain our vision and then through the interview process we review how much of the vision stuck with the candidate. If more than less stuck, we send that candidate through the extended process to arrive at the best possible employee in each key position within our company.
What are your plans for 2016 and beyond?
In 2016, we expect to finalize our infrastructure such that our global footprint is worldwide and game-changing. Once we have that in place, we will begin implementing our phase II land & expand strategy. By 2017, we expect to be the major player in our sector. Once we have achieved our primary objectives, we expect to grow the business into markets which we are not currently targeting.
Company: Ghost Systems, Inc.
Name: Don Ritzman
Email: don.ritzman@ghost-systems.com
Web Address: www.ghostsystemsinc.com
Address: 917 Tahoe Blvd, Suite 204; Incline Village, NV 89451
Telephone: 775.298.4145
