Oxford Solutions

Originally founded as Oxford Solutions in 2012 by Aidan Kehoe, John Schlager, and Lee Noriega, the company rebranded to SKOUT Cybersecurity after being acquired by RSE Ventures in 2018 for a reported $30 million. A subsequent milestone occurred in July 2021, when Barracuda Networks acquired SKOUT, integrating it into its operations to enter the Extended Detection and Response (XDR) market. The firm was established to make cybersecurity more accessible, particularly for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs).

Co-founder Aidan Kehoe, an Irish native who served as CEO, has a background as a serial entrepreneur, having previously founded the risk management firm Oxford Global, which was acquired by Willis Towers Watson. His journey from moving to the U.S. and starting in the restaurant business to founding multiple successful companies showcases a history of identifying market needs and building teams to address them. This entrepreneurial experience directly shaped the company's mission to simplify complex security challenges.

The company operates on a cyber-as-a-service model, delivering its solutions exclusively through a channel of Managed Service Providers (MSPs). This B2B model enables MSPs to offer robust security services to their end clients without the substantial investment in building and staffing their own 24/7 Security Operations Center (SOC). The core of the business is the Barracuda SKOUT Managed XDR platform, a cloud-native solution that provides continuous security monitoring and response services. The platform integrates with a client's existing security infrastructure, including email, firewalls, endpoints, and identity and access management tools, to collect and analyze data. By correlating telemetry from these varied sources, the platform can detect threats and enable swift incident response, handled by SKOUT's security professionals in its 24/7 SOC. This approach provides MSPs with a turnkey security offering, allowing them to protect their customers from a range of cyberthreats like phishing and ransomware.

Keywords: SKOUT Cybersecurity, Barracuda Managed XDR, cyber-as-a-service, Managed Service Providers, MSP security, Extended Detection and Response, XDR platform, Security Operations Center, SOC-as-a-Service, Aidan Kehoe, threat detection, incident response, endpoint security, network security, email security, cybersecurity for SMBs, cloud-native security, RSE Ventures, Barracuda Networks acquisition, security monitoring