Considering the global connectivity, the risk of cyber-security is increasing. With poorly configured cloud services paired with sophisticated cybercriminals, your data is at threat of a breach or a cyber attack. And to avoid this, you must deploy the best cyber-security services.
Led by CEO Sezen Uysal, Roqos is one such company that provides the best cyber-security services to its customers. In this Interview with Sezen Uysal, let us hear about the journey of the company.
Tell us about the company.
Roqos was established in 2014. It is located in Tysons VA. It provides cyber security, VPN, and cellular data solutions to homes and small businesses.
What were the initial challenges you faced?
Convincing residential and small businesses customers to get cyber security protection.
Which was that point that triggered the growth of the company?
After providing a complete solution with Roqos Core cyber security appliances, Roqos apps to easily manage Roqos Cores, and the Roqos Cloud to provide remote management, our sales started growing.
How have the company graphs changed since the foundation? Can you share a few statistics?
We launched our first product in late 2016. In the next three years, we doubled our yearly top lines.
What is the reason behind your company’s long-standing success?
Innovation, feature-richness, and easiness of our solutions, as well as a responsive and helpful support team.
The Products/Services
What are the products/services the company focuses on? How are your services different from those in the market?
Our cyber security and VPN solutions are completely open-source. Nowadays every end-user should demand open source cyber security solutions as otherwise, one would never know what is inside the critical cyber security hardware and software, such as, who wrote the software, does the firewall have a back door, etc.
Our cyber security and VPN solutions are completely open source.
In addition, our solutions are extremely easy to set up and manage. They do not require a dedicated IT team. Roqos apps are very easy to learn and use, while advanced users can always access advanced settings.
We also believe cyber security requires real-time notifications. Our solutions notify our customers in real-time with network events such as internet loss, new VPN connections, backup cellular network activation, and suspicious activities which may be an indication of malware, etc.
All of the Roqos solutions are designed and mostly assembled in our Tysons location. An only a small batch of our small model was assembled in China.
How do you decide to take the company a step further in terms of your products/services?
We are focusing on new innovative features to address complex problems with affordable solutions.
Is there any new addition to the list of products/services? Anything exciting you would like to share?
We are about to launch cyber security solutions bundled with Roqos hardware and cellular data, where companies can have always-on internet via reliable Roqos Core appliances.
We win customers one by one.
We are also adding many innovative VPN features. For example, today it is not possible for small and medium businesses to have VPN connections at shared office spaces, or with ISPs using private IP addresses, or via cellular internet access. With Roqos’ new VPN feature using Roqos Cloud, establishing a VPN connection in any environment with a couple of clicks will be possible.
Leadership
What do you think are the responsibilities of an entrepreneur?
- Converting ideas into effective business
- Find ways to sustain the growth
- Empower the team work by asking feedback and new ideas, encouraging open communication, and growing employees’ capabilities
Can you please brief us about your professional experience?
I have been in the networking industry since the early 90s. I worked in several engineering positions at Internet’s core companies such as Network Solutions, EDS (now HP), and Cable&Wireless. Before Roqos, I founded and managed Simena which was acquired by Netscoute Systems (NASDAQ: NTCT) in 2011.
How do you look after your employees? What makes your team unique?
Roqos team is like a family where everybody’s opinion counts. We are open to our employees in terms of potentials, and challenges. They see how dedicated everybody is, especially in these hard times. We make sure that every employee feels the success of the company, and get encouraged for bigger successes.
Is there any special experience with your clients you would like to highlight?
We win customers one by one. We show them our hardworking dedicated team provides unique solutions designed for their expectations. We constantly ask for their feedback in terms of feature sets, our support team, and future ideas. Many features we implemented came from our customers.
