Cradlepoint's New CTO Poised To Lead Internet Of Things

Ryan Allphin
Ryan Allphin

Fast growing wireless networking solutions company Cradlepoint is stocking up on industry veterans including security specialist Ryan Allphin as its new CTO after 13 years at Intel.

Allphin comes to Cradlepoint with a robust security resume. His last role at Intel was as senior vice president and general manager of the Security Management Business Unit responsible for worldwide research and development, product management and business go-to-market programs for security management, data and risk analytics, threat intelligence and compliance solutions.

Allphin spoke to IT Best of Breed about how Cradlepoint is in prime position to be a leader in the IoT marketplace, adding more security to the company's offerings and how its nimbleness will lead to success against bigger competitors.

How is Cradlepoint in prime position to be a leader in the emerging IoT market?

There's a lot of buzz around IoT and what does it mean as things are gaining IP addresses. One of the great values that Cradlepoint has started but will have more going forward is being able to leverage from the sensor network as each one of those devices becomes a wealth of information to be analyzed against everything else happening in the network. A router is in a great position, especially on wireless network, to be able to see things that a direct wired LAN will miss.

For example a new endpoint connecting in, being able to interrogate that endpoint to see what its running, could it be attacked and penetrated in some way. So in the IoT case being able to understand that sensor information and bringing it into a data analytics engine will be a rich value to Cradlepoint going forward and that's what we plan to build out.

What is Cradlepoint bringing to the table that made you leave Intel?

Before I left Intel/McAfee, I was running a large organization there of over 500 people. I wanted to come to an organization that had a strong core strategy. There are two main areas I see going forward that will be big investment areas for IT organizations, from small business to the large enterprise.

How organizations deal with managing their enterprise from a cloud perspective is one of them. What does that mean to them and how can they save money in the cloud. I've seen some of that transition happen and I believe there are some tools that IT organizations need in order to realize the reduction of that OpEx. Finding an organization who already has a cloud management solution, which Cradlepoint does, and extending that to the workflow and use cases these IT organizations want and need in order to reduce that OpEx.

And the other reason that brought you to Cradlepoint?

The Internet of Things. I feel like the landscape is going to be changing here for years to come as we start to learn more about what does it mean when your refrigerator now has an IP address, and your TV and all these different consumer products have an IP -- how do those then connect into a network and how do we understand the risk of doing that.

I wanted to look for an organization that's very invested in IoT and created a solution that's best positioned for IoT success inside of an IT organization. Cradlepoint answers both of those.