Bruce Koop, a well-known figure in California’s IT, jokes that he’s an “accidental tourist” in the space, someone who stumbled into it and never looked back. His four-decades-long career is proof that sometimes your niche finds you.
Koop recently joined the cloud security company Wiz as its western regional manager, serving state and local government and education. The young company’s reputation and growth were key considerations, not to mention its reputation among friends and colleagues.
“A few of the folks I worked with in the public sector had gone over to Wiz over the course of the last couple of years, and I saw the explosive growth of the company and was really impressed,” he said.
He began as a programmer with Texas Instruments, working up through various management positions with heavy hitters, like Ivanti, Okta, and CA Technologies. Most recently, he held an identical title with development, security and operations company GitLab.The company’s approach to identifying vulnerabilities also caught Koop’s eye. Wiz tools quickly assess and prioritize existing security gaps for users, rather than just providing them with a jumbled laundry list of issues to address.
“A couple of things that jumped out to me as part of this onboarding process and my due diligence … half of their customers have achieved zero criticalities in their environment, which is pretty admirable,” Koop said. “It's very tough to have that kind of security rigor, where you just don't have any of those criticalities.”
“[One thing] Wiz does is it really helps to make things just a lot easier, quicker, to understand where your vulnerabilities are and where the critical ones to solve [are],” he added.
While he’s just weeks into the new role, he said he’s excited about the way the company operates, specifically in how it offers its clients proof of concepts that show the immediate value proposition.
“A lot of vendors will avoid doing proof of values or proof of concepts. We encourage it, because we can literally show value within the first day of deploying the product,” he said.
Koop holds a Bachelor of Science in computer information systems, accounting from Aquinas College. When he’s not working, he and his wife enjoy traveling and finding any excuse to explore the state’s natural beauty.
