Global CFO Excellence Awards 2021

8 Acquisition International - Global CFO Excellence Awards 2021 May21040 Software Development CFO of the Year 2021: René Kantehm – Western Europe VMRay develops software with a focus on a single mission: To help companies protect themselves against the growing global cyberattacks. Its automated malware analysis and detection solutions help enterprises around the world to minimise business risks and to protect their valuable data. CFO, René Kantehm manages and finances the hyper-growth strategy of the company. As a strategic partner of the CEO and board, he fulfils a broad set of responsibilities in finance, legal, strategy, leadership, and communication. In light of René being recognised within Acquisition International’s Global CFO Excellence Awards, we delve deeper to find out more. wned, led and staffed by technical experts dedicated to serving technical professionals, VMRay understands its clients’ needs and challenges; it is committed to continuously developing solutions that keep IT users a step ahead of hackers, with its major clientele including three of the FAANG tech giants, four of the ‘big six’ accounting firms, 10 global financials, and 60+ government agencies. VMRay’s founders, Dr. Carsten Willems and Dr. Ralf Hund were early pioneers in automated malware analysis and detection, developing breakthrough technologies that continue to lead the industry. They founded VMRay to transform their research into practical solutions for making the online world a safer place. The company’s strategy is to be the worldwide market leader in its core segment of sandboxing technology in the cyber security market within the next five years. A sandbox is an isolated testing environment that enables users to run possible malware without affecting the IT infrastructure of the company. To achieve this ambitious goal, VMRay set up an OKR management framework (Objectives and Key Results) to implement and execute its strategy. The main benefits of OKR are a better focus on results that matter, increased transparency in its teams, and more strategic alignment with all employees. There are three products available from VMRay: VMRay Analyzer, VMRay Detector, and VMRay Email Threat Defender. The VMRay Analyzer meets the gold standard for dynamic malware analysis. Incorporating many industry “firsts” and “bests”, it empowers DFIR teams to deepen their insight into malware behaviour, streamline investigations, and enhance incident response across the enterprise. The VMRay Detector is the nexus for integrating the VMRay platform with other security systems to provide rapid, fully automated threat detection at scale. Precise, reliable detection results can be shared O across the ecosystem to trigger block/allow decisions and other security measures. The VMRay Email Threat Defender fully automates the scanning of inbound emails by analysing suspicious attachments and embedded links. By sharing rapid detection results with other tools, it helps thwart or interrupt lateral movement, credentials theft, and other downstream activities that lead to the compromise of high- value assets. As a cyber security software company, VMRay is acting in a very interesting industry. Cyber security statistics show a huge increase in hacked and breached data from sources that are common in workplaces today, like mobile and IoT devices. On top of this, COVID-19 has ramped up remote workforces, making inroads for cyberattacks. Worldwide cybercrime costs have hit $6 trillion annually this year. Therefore, it is not a surprise that the global cyber security market of $167 billion in 2020 will grow in average by 11% until 2028, confirming VMRay’s company growth strategy. The company believes that it will strongly benefit from the current situation. Its main opportunity is also its main challenge: To transform VMRay from a start-up company to a scale-up company. This shift required a new mindset for the executive management. At first, they had to align the overall strategy. Then, they had to define the right ways to automatise the business processes and check possible outsourcing chances. VMRay implemented a professional CRM system (Salesforce) and evaluated the right ERP system (Netsuite). It also professionalised its sales, marketing and HR teams with senior managers. VMRay is backed by investors. Private equity and venture capital investors usually have an investment horizon of five to seven years and plan to exit after that. So, one of René Kantehm’s main tasks in the next few years is to find the best exit solution, e.g. a strategic acquisition by a tech company. Or the company will take the IPO