ID Agent CEO Kevin Lancaster Leaves Kaseya After Acquisition
‘I have made a career out of innovating and scaling great companies. Now, I get to focus 100 percent of my time on identifying, investing in, and helping others achieve what I have with ID Agent,’ Lancaster tells CRN.
ID Agent Founder and CEO Kevin Lancaster has departed nearly two years after the cybersecurity startup was acquired by IT service management vendor Kaseya.
Lancaster founded Bowie, Md.-based ID Agent in 2016 to provide dark web monitoring, phishing simulation and security awareness training to MSP and IT department customers. The company added 1,500 channel partners in just two years and was purchased by Miami-based Kaseya in May 2019, with Lancaster continuing to lead ID Agent as an independent business unit of Kaseya after the acquisition.
Following the deal, Lancaster also became Kaseya’s GM of security solutions, which involved spending time with the company’s product and development teams as well as emerging technology vendors to pursue new security partnerships and capabilities. More recently, Lancaster became Kaseya’s EVP of go-to-market, where he drove cross-functional alignment and collaboration across the sales organization.
[Related: Kaseya Buys ID Agent To Strengthen Dark Web Monitoring Muscle]
Lancaster left Kaseya in April, according to his LinkedIn page.
“As for moving on, it really came down to the fact that I’m an entrepreneur at heart,” Lancaster told CRN in a statement. “I have made a career out of innovating and scaling great companies. Now, I get to focus 100 percent of my time on identifying, investing in, and helping others achieve what I have with ID Agent and others.”
While at Kaseya, Lancaster said he’s most proud of developing and executing on a robust cybersecurity acquisition strategy. Specifically, the August 2020 acquisition of phishing defense startup Graphus and the February 2021 acquisition of managed Security Operations Center (SOC) provider RocketCyber have proven to be homeruns for Kaseya, and Lancaster said he departs Kaseya feeling good about both deals.
“The good news for the channel is that there are some truly innovative solutions out there,” Lancaster said. “If I can find the ones that are looking to do right by the channel and help them scale, then it’s a win-win for all.”
Kaseya said Lancaster will be replaced by John Guilfoy, who took over in April the company’s executive vice president of go-to-market strategy and operations. In that role, he is responsible for the company’s business planning, enablement, recruitment, and retention. Guilfoy was most recently an operating consultant for private equity firm Insight Partners, which has been invested in Kaseya since 2013.
“As happens with most acquisitions, Kevin committed to a certain amount of time to stay on and lead ID Agent’s successful integration,” Dana Liedholm, Kaseya’s senior vice president of corporate marketing, told CRN in a statement. “Once that time expired, entrepreneur that he is (I know because I worked for him at another company before ID Agent), Kevin decided to move on to his next adventure.”
Kaseya continues to show its commitment to MSPs by investing in the growth of its Powered Services platform, which was part of the ID Agent acquisition, according to Liedholm. And just this week, Kaseya’s IT Glue business acquired MSP coaching and mentoring firm TruMethods to provide smaller businesses with access to a virtual chief information officer to help them better manage their technology stack.
“We are grateful to him [Kevin] for his contributions that ensure continued success for ID Agent and wish him all the very best,” Liedholm said.
Kaseya has continued to bolster ID Agent since its acquisition, adding Passly to its Digital Risk Protection platform to offer MSPs single sign-on, multi-factor authentication and password management. ID Agent Dark Web ID also added Prospecting Enhancements, allowing MSPs to pull in company data—such as the number of employees, business type and estimated revenue—to amplify customer prospecting.