Cyren’s Lior Samuelson To Exit CEO Job, Stay On As Chairman

Cyren CEO Lior Samuelson announced Wednesday that he plans to step down from that job after leading the cloud security vendor for more than five years.

The McLean, Va.-based company said Samuelson will be involved in the selection and on-boarding of his successor, and intends to transition responsibilities over to that successor. After departing as CEO, Samuelson will continue to serve as chairman of Cyren's board of directors.

"It has been a privilege serving Cyren over the last eight years, both on the board and as CEO," Samuelson said in a statement. "We have considerable opportunity in front of us and I remain committed to supporting our executive team to ensure we are well positioned to capitalize on all of our opportunities."

[Related: Cloud Security Vendor Cyren Debuts Partner Program]

Cyren didn't immediately respond to a request for additional comment. The company's stock was up $0.08 (3.29 percent) to $2.51 in trading Wednesday morning.

Samuelson first joined Cyren in January 2011 as chairman, and grew his responsibilities in November 2013 to include the CEO role. Prior to arriving at Cyren, Samuelson served as president and CEO of PricewaterhouseCoopers Securities, a managing partner with KPMG, and was the founder and managing partner of Mercator Capital, which specializing in advising and investing around technology and telecom.

"Lior has been an invaluable part of Cyren during his tenure," Todd Thomson, board member and lead independent director, said in a statement. "He has enhanced the organization at every level, adding key leadership talent, developing a new product roadmap in enterprise security and navigating new growth opportunities."

Under Samuelson, Cyren last year introduced a three-tier partner program with straightforward onboarding, strong margins and deal registration protection, and robust online training. The new GoCloud Partner Program introduced online training, sales enablement and marketing tools to Cyren's channel community, along with simplifying the deal registration process through online tracking.

The company plans to launch two significant products during 2019. The first is an anti-phishing tool that allows enterprises to proactively remediate and remove phishing emails after they have been delivered to a user’s mailbox.

In addition, Cyren plans to integrate its web security technology directly into the Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection platform in order to provide an additional layer of protection to Windows Defender enterprise customers.

Cyren finished 2018 with record revenues of $35.9 million, up 17 percent year-over-year from 2017. From a profitability perspective, Cyren's net loss in 2018 grew to $19.4 million, up 24.4 percent from a net loss of $15.6 million the year prior.

During the year, Cyren renewed and expanded its business with two of the company’s five largest customers by relying on the company's Threat Intelligence Services tool. One of the contracts was renewed at a 17 percent premium, and includes a significant multi-year prepayment.