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Carbon Black Veterans Join Armored Things IoT Security Startup

Joshua Hartley
Armored Things Chief Architect Joshua Hartley
Chris Lord

Armored Things, a cyber security startup that bills itself as the next generation in incident response, looks to be gathering an executive dream team to head its software innovation and platform design.

Chris Lord, formerly Carbon Black’s director of R&D and chief architect for threat detection, has come on board as CTO and co-founder. Joshua Hartley, a former member of Carbon Black’s technical staff in R&D, will join Armored Things as chief architect.

The Boston-based newborn seeks to leverage the expected stratospheric growth of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in the enterprise space. It contends that its technology enables businesses -- and other venues such as schools and stadiums -- to improve their physical and cyber security by analyzing and aggregating data across previously isolated, Internet-facing devices managed at large volumes, such as cameras, locks and sensors.

They appear to have a point, the endpoint actually. Much of the movement on IoT security is toward policy, standardization, vendor collaboration and endpoints, all of which are among the building blocks of technology integration and environment control. Lord’s background as Carbon Black’s chief architect for endpoint threat detection, response and prevention, includes developing products to scale from thousands to millions of systems.

Lord said he is “excited to solve this multifaceted security puzzle with a multi-paradigm solution, by leveraging my experience across security, big data, and decentralization.” Hartley expressed similar sentiments, saying he is “excited to join this incredible team to build a scalable system for analyzing a vast array of devices and take advantage of the massive value in the data that already exists.”

In late 2016, Lord and Hartley co-founded Latch Mobile, which provides a service for parents that analyzes what their children do on mobile devices and alerts them when there is harmful content or potentially dangerous activity across all apps and social media, according to his LinkedIn profile. It’s not clear if the two will continue their work at Latch.

Charles Curran

Armored Things CEO Charles Curran said that Lord’s and Hartley’s skills at “architecting decentralized software to enable customers to effortlessly manage and secure computing end points at scale,” are crucial to the company’s success.

“They helped build the premier software product in PC endpoint security for enterprise. At Armored Things, they are are now building the premier product in IoT endpoint security for enterprise,” he said. Our team is thrilled that Chris and Josh are joining our effort to keep schools and stadiums safer via technology.”

According to Crunchbase, Armored Things has not raised investment capital to this point.

D. Howard Kass

D. Howard Kass is a contributing editor to MSSP Alert. He brings a career in journalism and market research to the role. He has served as CRN News Editor, Dataquest Channel Analyst, and West Coast Senior Contributing Editor at Channelnomics. As the CEO of The Viewpoint Group, he led groundbreaking market research.