Cayosoft is a company that delivers innovative products that help organizations manage and protect their Microsoft infrastructures everywhere, from on-premises, to hybrid, to the cloud. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Cayosoft founder and CEO Robert Bobel to learn more about the company.
Robert Bobel’s Background
What is Robert Bobel’s background? Bobel said:
“I started in software, and for ten years worked at Quest Software, where I was responsible for Quest’s flagship Microsoft Management platform which drove the identity, server, mobile and cloud strategies.”
“During my time at Quest, I really came to understand what’s unique about large and medium sized Microsoft environments. Microsoft builds solutions for such a broad customer base that it treats them all in a fairly generic way and their products are ubiquitous. But that ubiquity is also what makes Microsoft environments attractive cyber targets for hackers, who think in terms of ROI just like any for-profit organization. I also observed how Active Directory had evolved – along with the needs of its users – and then founded Cayosoft in 2018 to offer customers access to modern Active Directory architectures that addressed those needs.”
Formation Of Cayosoft
How did the idea for the company come together? Bobel shared:
“We incorporated Cayosoft in 2018 when my partner and I observed a paradigm shift in the industry as companies began to transform their legacy Microsoft client-server technology to a more modern hybrid-cloud approach. A critical part of all Microsoft environments, whether they’re on-prem, in the cloud or hybrid, is Active Directory. According to Microsoft, 90% of Global Fortune 1000 companies use it.”
“Active Directory, or AD, provides a centralized location in a networked environment that enables organizations to manage access to resources and control users. AD represents both the keys to the kingdom and the treasure map leading to the organization’s digital resources. If a company’s AD goes down, all business stops; it is that critical. It’s that aspect of AD that makes Microsoft environments so attractive to hackers.”
“We also saw that native Microsoft tools and those made by third parties were not doing enough to help businesses protect AD across on-prem, cloud and hybrid deployments. Based on our experience helping companies on their journey from on-premise to the cloud, we came up with a novel way to protect AD in any environment. That’s how we developed instant Active Directory forest recovery and designed a single platform that replaces multiple legacy products, and that’s how Cayosoft started.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Bobel reflected:
“I can share two:
1.) In 2023, several of our former colleagues from various companies joined the Cayosoft team. This was a big vote of confidence in our technology. The fact that these talented industry veterans put their trust in Cayosoft and the technology we’ve built – and are willing to bet their careers on it – was phenomenal for me and for our company.
2.) Just after our founding in 2018, we had a customer switch to Cayosoft from a competitive solution for the first time. It was a U.S. state agency that had been using a competitive tool that was not cloud-ready. We intentionally built our products to be hybrid and cloud-first so we can provide full support across on-premises, hybrid and cloud-only customers. Seeing companies embrace the Cayosoft approach and move away from competitive solutions, which have been around for years, was a powerful moment for us.”
Core Products
What are Cayosofts’s main areas, core products and features? Bobel explained:
“Cayosoft’s three main areas are management, monitoring and recovery. Our four core products are Cayosoft Guardian Forest Recovery, Cayosoft Administrator, Cayosoft Guardian, and our Management and Protection Suite.”
“Cayosoft Guardian Forest Recovery is an all-in-one, instant recovery solution for all Microsoft directories, on-premises AD, hybrid AD, and Entra ID. It covers all major directory recovery scenarios, including AD object and attribute, partition, domain controller, and forest recovery.”
“Cayosoft Administrator delivers a single solution to automate and streamline day-to-day IT administration on a range of products, from on-prem AD to Microsoft 365. It simplifies management with role-based delegation, rule-based automation, self-service and Microsoft 365 license optimization.”
“Cayosoft Guardian enables recovery and protection of data on Azure Active Directory and hybrid AD by monitoring all directory changes and threats, while empowering administrators to understand and, when necessary, rollback those changes instantly.”
“Cayosoft Management and Protection Suite is purpose-built for modern Microsoft environments from the ground up. This suite helps organizations ensure security and protection, improve efficiency, and maintain compliance. It includes Cayosoft Administrator and Cayosoft Guardian. Many of our customers who are using the suite also use Cayosoft Guardian Forest Recovery as an add-on to protect their Active Directory from ransomware and other full forest directory outages.”
How Cayosoft Instant AD Forest Recovery Works
When asking how Cayosoft instant AD forest recovery works, he pointed out:
“Think of forest recovery as a fault-tolerant or stand-by version of AD that’s created and stored in the cloud. When a company is hacked and its on-premises Active Directory is compromised, the company can simply shut down their legacy servers that run Active Directory and open access to their standby version. That instantly brings back all their logins, and they’re no longer locked out of their AD.”
“Our forest recovery tools also enable our customers to analyze their security to discover what was compromised and correct those errors, as well as to proactively monitor and roll back unintended changes. We offer roles and business rules that a company can use to reduce the possibility that hackers can get in and change those types of permissions – or even employees, who may change them by mistake. The solution can also be used for post recovery security clean-up as well.”
Evolution Of Cayosoft’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Bobel noted:
“We’ve always been a customer-focused company, and we build our new functionality based on customer feedback requests. One of the things we do best is understand what’s going right and what our customers’ struggles are. That’s how we decided to add support for Microsoft Intune, for example – it was requested by our customers. This way, each of our customers can benefit from the experiences and feedback of all the others. Cayosoft has immense customer loyalty with a 99% customer retention rate over the past five years, and a customer satisfaction rate of 4.5 out of 5.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Bobel cited:
“We’ve had many, from the formation of our company in 2018 to our continued multi-year customer retention – which we celebrate every year. Our patent-pending instant forest recovery technology is another major milestone for us. Another milestone is our March 2024 $22.5 funding raise. During a time of economic uncertainty, when many other companies aren’t being funded, this funding from Centana Growth Partners speaks to our product market fit and business model, and the fact that we found the right partners to help us develop the revenue model we need to expand our operations globally. And the timing is definitely now — we’ve seen a surge in interest in our technology over the past year. AD attacks and outages are increasing, and organizations are being reminded of the importance of protecting AD and are investing in modern solutions that manage and secure it.”
Customer Success Stories
After asking Bobel about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“In early 2024, a large state agency experienced an Active Directory outage – they were using a competitive solution that failed to recover AD during the outage, but the agency happened to be running a proof of concept with Cayosoft Guardian Forest Recovery at the same time. They called us for help, and Cayosoft was able to step in, recover their Active Directory and have them up and running in less than an hour. Our engineers were able to explain what happened and roll it back, and they signed on as a Cayosoft customer the following week.”
Funding
After asking Bobel about the company’s funding, he revealed:
“Our $22.5 million raise shows how strong all of the participants are: Centana Growth Partners’ trust in Cayosoft’s technology, and KPMG’s role as investment banking advisor. Centana joined us as a minority equity investor, which means that they trust us to run the company, and are here to help us grow this business and become a market leader.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Bobel assessed:
“TAM for identity at Microsoft is one of the largest markets in IT today. This is because every employee at a company can have dozens of identities – not just a login, but also multi-factor authentication and extended authentication and authorization to other platforms.”
“It starts with Active Directory, but extends to other platforms such as HR systems, scheduling systems, tools like Salesforce, and the list goes on. It is critical that all those systems are well-managed and protected, and that companies are able to monitor for change. And in the event of an outage, every minute that those logins are down means that employees can’t work, customers can’t submit orders, suppliers can’t respond to demand, and so forth. This is why accelerating AD recovery is so important.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Bobel affirmed:
“No other solution on the market offers instant Active Directory forest recovery – in seconds to minutes. Other solutions take hours or even days to get back up, causing potentially thousands of dollars in losses for every minute Active Directory is down. For example, the ransomware group that recently took down Change Healthcare did the same to MGM. MGM was down for two weeks, and they told the SEC that the attack cost them around $100 million. If MGM had Cayosoft, we’d have had Active Directory back up in 20 minutes, and they would not have had to pay the ransom.”
“Furthermore, other Active Directory recovery solutions often allow the source of the compromise to remain once AD is restored. This means that as soon as Active Directory is back up, the hackers can re-encrypt and you’re back to where you started. Cayosoft products work differently, which allows us to prevent the compromise from reoccurring.”
“We offer an all-in-one solution on a single, unified platform that’s designed for modern architectures – on-prem, cloud, and hybrid. It works on all Microsoft environments. Many competitive solutions were developed in the late 1990s and early 2000s specifically for on-premises environments. They aren’t capable of addressing the issues that enterprise customers face today in cloud, mobile and hybrid environments. They often require users to perform additional manual operations and tasks to achieve the same things that Cayosoft can do automatically.”
“For example, Cayosoft automates provisioning and deprovisioning, which means that when somebody joins or leaves the company their access is either automatically granted or revoked. There’s no time delay and there are no mistakes that can occur through manual operations.”
“Cayosoft products speed up the work by at least 50% and eliminate the problems that come with manual operations that must be performed on separate interfaces.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Bobel pointed out:
“Our near term goals are to continue to improve our customer support – that’s a priority for us as we grow. We are also looking to expand our sales and marketing operations both in the U.S. and globally. Longer term, we continue to look for innovations within our existing products, and will also look at additional products and technology that we can incorporate into our product set. We also believe that we will enable a shift in how organizations view Active Directory forest recovery – and make instantaneous Active Directory recovery the industry standard.”
