Dive Brief:
- Cybersecurity platform provider Silent Push announced its appointment of Kirk Appelman as Chief Revenue Officer on Thursday. The firm, which said it uses predictive intelligence to identify threat actors, sometimes years in advance, serves large enterprises and government clients.
- Appelman brings 25 years of technology sales and leadership experience to his new role at Silent Push. Among his top priorities is optimizing the firm’s new partner program to drive sales — by identifying three strategic partners per sales region and building strong relationships.
- “We can't be everywhere,” Appelman said. “Some of these partners have tremendous relationships, not only to recognize opportunities but to help us navigate large organizations. We want our partners to be excited and to find it profitable to be working with Silent Push. That’s the only way it’s going to work.”
Dive Insight:
Silent Push was founded in early 2020 to help organizations track, monitor and counteract global threat activity. The firm operates a proprietary scanning and aggregation engine that logs changes across millions of IP addresses, tracking activity from known actors to identify their plans, months to years in advance, and help enterprise and government clients prevent attacks.
The preemptive cybersecurity offering influenced Appelman’s decision to join the team.
“It’s a game-changer,” Appelman said. “People put locks on their doors, an alarm system and a camera before the attacker or burglar gets in. We’re literally able to watch that burglar in a Walmart two states away, buying gloves and tape and rope, whatever they’re doing to prepare. We’re in their lair, so to speak.”
Though the startup has a global reach, the company operates with a small sales team. Appelman hopes to leverage the partner community to build out the firm’s client base.
“Partners not only help identify opportunities, they also navigate organizations,” he said. “They work through procurement processes and onboarding, which especially for large organizations and financial institutions, the new vendor onboarding and risk management process is brutal.”
It’s not Appelman’s first cybersecurity rodeo, and he’s taking on a role Silent Push filled just three years ago. Prior to his appointment at Silent Push, he served as VP of sales at cybersecurity company Synack. Appelman started his career in network infrastructure sales before joining the cybersecurity sector. He describes himself as a salesman at heart.
“I like to be out in front of customers,” Appelman said. “My management style is being in the field, shoulder-to-shoulder. Companies don’t buy technology because it’s cool or innovative. Companies invest in technologies because they have a problem to solve, so part of my philosophy is really understanding what is the problem or the pain that the client is experiencing.”
Over the next few years, Appelman’s vision for Silent Push includes launching an OEM program that feeds data to other cybersecurity companies, and transitioning to a 100% channel focus that creates an ecosystem of value-added resellers, integrators and managed service providers.
