Albert Caballero might have his head in the cloud, but he’s no daydreamer

As Trapezoid Digital Security’s CTO, Albert Caballero leads a company dedicated to providing its customers with transparency and better control over their digital information

Internet security has been at the forefront of Albert Caballero’s mind since he first logged on onto the Internet almost two decades ago. Then a 20-year-old bartender studying creative writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, he bought his first computer, connected to the web, and visited his first website—a bank—to check his own account.

Now as chief technology officer (CTO) at Trapezoid Digital Security Services, LLC, Caballero still has virtual security on the mind. He finds himself at the threshold of a new technology at the Miami-based IT security service provider that he says will allow customers more transparency and control over their digital information than ever before. While Trapezoid has focused primarily on the service angle of IT security, this latest venture will be the first time the company has released its own security product.

Caballero explains that Trapezoid’s new software product, Trust Control Suite, “is designed to fill in security gaps in visibility for cloud subscribers, or the organization putting data in the cloud, giving them a method to track where there data actually resides from within their data centers into their cloud provider’s environment and anywhere in the world.” When a user or company puts their data and resources into a cloud environment—hardware infrastructure not within the user’s control—they lose the ability to know exactly where their data is and if it has been moved. For many individuals and businesses, whose data is federally regulated, it is important that their information not leave US boundaries.

Caballero explains, “cloud providers don’t really have a way of proving to their customers that their data hasn’t left US boundaries … There’s currently no way to prove that. We’re helping to tie workloads in the cloud to the underlying physical infrastructure, so providers can give subscribers a better idea of where their information actually lives.”

His venture into IT security picked up its real steam in 2007 when Caballero was approached by Terremark, an IT service provider and managed hosting company whose clients included H&R Block, Visa, and several high-profile government agencies. They wanted to build a security operations center that logged and monitored the data of all their customers, who numbered in the thousands. For years, Terremark had been in the business of monitoring traditional data centers, and it occurred to them that instead they could let customers use their infrastructure and lease computing power on demand instead of physical servers; they called it the Enterprise Cloud.

It was at this point, Caballero says, that the need for a software like Trapezoid’s Trust Control Suite became apparent. With the recent acquisition of Terremark by Verizon, in late 2010 Caballero left intent on filling this visibility gap in security that was introduced by cloud computing.

Today Caballero and his team are working with cloud providers to install the technology both at providers’ data centers, and in their customers’ data centers along with a suite of McAfee security products.
His success and innovation in the industry, Caballero says, can be credited to his intensive study of security technologies, as well as a background in communications he never let get stale. It’s this capability, in addition to his technical expertise, that’s turned him into an executive.

“An executive must have strong communication skills,” he says. “I feel that my background in writing has been a key factor in elevating my game from security engineer to business executive. Without that, I’d still be installing systems and monitoring consoles, not running a company.”