Why we invested in Talon

The secure enterprise web browser for the modern workforce

By Jake Seid, Co-founder and General Partner

When I first met Ofer Ben-Noon and Ohad Bobrov, I knew this was a special team that shares Ballistic’s mission of securing our digital future.

We launched Ballistic to invest in and incubate companies that address – once and for all – the complex cybersecurity challenges the nation, and enterprises, face. Key to accomplishing our mission is finding the people, products and services that accommodate an agile, modern workforce and an ever-sprawling attack surface.

Talon, the company behind the leading secure enterprise browser, is one of the few security products we’ve seen that offers not only strong security but also a seamless end-user experience. With Talon, enterprises can substantially reduce the cost and complexity associated with current approaches.

The company is also in a unique position to create a truly new and complementary category of endpoint security products versus a refresh of an existing category with existing incumbents. And as we know, because of the sheer volume of endpoints that exist, there’s a massive TAM for the company.

We believe Talon is uniquely positioned to deliver all these benefits, not only because they are a top-notch team, with a seamless, secure offering, but also because of three recent market catalysts:

1. The browser is the new operating system.

We believe SaaS adoption is reaching its tipping point.

One large enterprise we spoke with revealed that 50,000 of their employees do 100 percent of their work in SaaS and web-native apps. That number is only rising. Large enterprises may have upwards of 700 sanctioned SaaS apps in use and an equal, or larger, number of unsanctioned “shadow IT” SaaS apps into which they have little to zero visibility. The transition to SaaS and web apps is driven not just by startups but by large, traditional software companies. Companies like Adobe, Microsoft and Oracle have a strategic mandate to transition their core, on-premises applications to SaaS and web-based architectures.

The majority of laptop/desktop computer processing power (CPU) is now devoted to browsing, and trends suggest this will only increase. Intel and Apple are now customizing their CPU Silicon to specifically optimize for web browsing.

Whether we are working from our corporate device, personal device, Windows, Mac, Android or iPhone, the browser is increasingly becoming the operating system for our work environment.

2. COVID changed the way we work.

In 2020, COVID activated a revolution in hybrid work – and the trend does not seem to be receding anytime soon. As enterprises return to the office, many have adopted long-term hybrid work strategies to attract and retain top talent – independent of COVID. As enterprises adopt new technical and management infrastructures to support remote work, they are also increasingly relying on contractors to get work done. As a result, an increasing number of workers are accessing corporate resources outside of the traditionally secure, enterprise perimeter.

This migration has created a nightmare for CIOs and CISOs, one that puts unreasonable demands on their time and personnel. In a recent survey done by Ponemon, 71 percent of security professionals said they were “very concerned” that remote work put their organizations at risk for a data breach.

We believe Talon will help alleviate a majority of their concerns by meeting workers where they work: from anywhere and on the browser.

3. Chromium has become a platform.

In 2020, Microsoft rebuilt their Edge browser on Chromium – validating the notion that Google’s browser engine would be a true open platform for others to build upon. The ability to leverage Chromium’s 40 million lines of code as the foundation to ensure SaaS and web-app compatibility across all operating systems allows a startup like Talon to concentrate their resources on truly differentiating features.

For Talon, that differentiating feature is enterprise security.

Chromium gives Talon the ability to be the endpoint security solution to offer a consistent security profile and set of policies on every major operating system for PCs and mobile devices.  And for every device in the enterprise including both managed and unmanaged.

Redefining security for modern worker

At Ballistic, we believe it’s high time for a security solution that meets the agile worker where they work, while returning sanity to the enterprise.

The cybersecurity industry has failed to adequately address this challenge. The revolution in hybrid work and SaaS adoption has rendered legacy solutions such as VPNs and virtual desktop solutions ineffective. These “solutions” also suffer from a high-friction end-user experience and can be costly to deploy and manage.

In a SaaS and web-app world, they are becoming obsolete. This has created a huge and unique opportunity for organizations to maximize security, the user experience, and cost savings, by adopting a security solution like Talon.

At Ballistic, we believe Talon addresses that market gap and will become a key block in our mission to help build a secure digital future.