Ben Volkow QIZ Security: The Serial Founder Betting on Quantum-Era Cybersecurity

Ben Volkow QIZ Security is the fourth act in a career that has already produced three companies and two exits. Volkow is the co-founder and CEO of QIZ Security, a New York- and Israel-based startup building a platform that discovers, prioritises, and fixes the vulnerable encryption hiding inside enterprise systems before quantum computers can break it. In July 2026, QIZ closed a $17 million seed round led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Merlin Ventures, the same investor, Bessemer, that has now backed Volkow across four separate ventures. Here is how a telecom-industry engineer became one of post-quantum cybersecurity’s most closely watched founders, and why investors keep betting on him a fourth time.

Table of Contents

1. Ben Volkow QIZ Security: Who Is He?
2. From Panasonic to Three Exits: Volkow’s Career Before QIZ
3. The Problem QIZ Security Set Out to Solve
4. Building QIZ Security: Team, Product, and Platform
5. Inside QIZ Security’s $17 Million Seed Round
6. Customers and Early Traction: Finance to Critical Infrastructure
7. The Investors Backing Ben Volkow’s Fourth Company
8. QIZ Security’s Position in the Post-Quantum Race
9. Leadership Style and What’s Next for QIZ Security
10. Lessons for Entrepreneurs From Ben Volkow’s Career
11. Frequently Asked Questions
12. Conclusion

Ben Volkow QIZ Security: Who Is He?

Ben Volkow is an Israeli serial entrepreneur with more than two decades of experience as a CEO and chairman, according to his Crunchbase profile. He studied computer science at the Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yaffo before building a career that has moved through mobile telecom, network infrastructure, connected-car data, and now quantum-era cybersecurity. His LinkedIn profile describes a track record built on identifying infrastructure-level problems years before they become mainstream, then building the company that solves them.

That pattern defines Ben Volkow’s approach to QIZ Security as much as it defined his earlier ventures. Where competitors wait for a crisis to become obvious, Volkow has built a career out of arriving early: early to mobile data, early to network signalling infrastructure, early to connected-vehicle data, and now early to the cryptographic transition the industry calls “Q-Day.”

From Panasonic to Three Exits: Volkow’s Career Before QIZ

Before founding anything himself, Volkow filled engineering and product roles at Panasonic Mobile Communications in the UK, where he worked on the company’s first European market products. He then moved to Sendo, a UK-based mobile data company, where he managed research and development groups.

Volkow’s first company as a founder was Sedona Networks, a VC-backed network solutions provider later acquired by Cisco. He followed that with Traffix Communication Systems, which he co-founded and led as CEO from 2005 to 2012; Traffix built a multi-million-dollar global business working with tier-1 telecom operators before F5 Networks acquired it for a reported $140 million. Volkow stayed on at F5 as a business unit general manager for four years before starting his next company.

That next company was Otonomo Technologies, founded in 2015 to help automakers and mobility companies manage and monetise connected-vehicle data. Volkow led Otonomo as CEO for eight years, taking the company public on Nasdaq, before it merged into Urgent.ly in 2023; he has served on Urgent.ly’s board since. In one interview, Volkow traced the idea for Otonomo directly to a conversation about data and security he had with a German automaker while still at F5, describing it as pulling together threads from his earlier telecom career.

The Problem QIZ Security Set Out to Solve

Quantum computers do not yet exist at the scale needed to break modern encryption, but researchers at Google, IBM, Palo Alto Networks, and Gartner have all warned that capable machines could arrive as early as 2029. The industry has started calling that moment “Q-Day.” The danger is not only in the future; data encrypted today can be captured now and decrypted later once sufficiently powerful quantum computers exist, a risk practitioners call “harvest now, decrypt later.”

Most large enterprises cannot answer a basic question about their own systems: what cryptography do we actually use, and where. Encryption is scattered across on-premises servers, cloud infrastructure, applications, and third-party services, often undocumented and effectively invisible to the security teams responsible for it. Migrating all of it to quantum-safe standards is not a weekend project; it can take years, and regulatory frameworks such as CNSA 2.0, NIST’s post-quantum cryptography standards, DORA, and NIS2 are already pushing organisations to start.

Building QIZ Security: Team, Product, and Platform

Ben Volkow co-founded QIZ Security in 2025 alongside Lenny Ridel and Dr. Itan Barmes. Barmes previously led the Global Quantum Cyber Readiness Team at Deloitte, where he advised some of the world’s largest organizations on quantum-safe strategy, and now serves as QIZ’s chief strategy officer.

According to QIZ Security’s own site, the platform is built around four stages: discovering cryptographic assets and mapping them against policy, prioritising risks by business impact and remediation effort, remediating issues through a step-by-step action plan, and governing cryptography continuously across the organisation going forward. Rather than deploying agents or network probes, which is how many legacy security tools operate, QIZ connects to enterprise systems through APIs, an approach the company says reduces friction and lets CISOs, compliance teams, and application owners collaborate on the same data instead of working from separate tools.

The platform is designed to catch problems that manual audits typically miss: outdated protocols, weak cipher suites, unencrypted data at rest, and cryptographic dependencies buried inside applications that security teams don’t realize exist. Once QIZ finds those issues, it ranks them by severity and business impact and generates a prioritised remediation plan rather than simply producing a long list of alerts.

Inside QIZ Security’s $17 Million Seed Round

QIZ Security announced a $17 million seed round on July 9, 2026, led jointly by Bessemer Venture Partners and Merlin Ventures. Evolution Equity Partners, Qbeat Ventures, Singtel Innov8, and Qino Cyber Capital also participated. The company says the capital will accelerate product development and expand its go-to-market presence as enterprise urgency around cryptographic modernisation builds.

Volkow has framed the round around timing more than technology alone. “Post-quantum readiness is quickly becoming a board-level cybersecurity and business priority,” he said in the funding announcement, adding that enterprises cannot manage cryptographic risk through one-time assessments alone. Amit Karp, a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, said QIZ brings the capabilities needed to turn post-quantum readiness from strategy into execution.

Customers and Early Traction: Finance to Critical Infrastructure

QIZ Security says it already has customers across financial services, telecommunications, healthcare, and critical infrastructure, sectors where regulatory pressure around cryptographic exposure is accelerating fastest. The company is also building technology partnerships with major infrastructure and security vendors, including Cisco, Amazon Web Services, Google, CrowdStrike, Deloitte, and EY, according to reporting from SiliconANGLE.

That combination, paying enterprise customers plus partnerships with the vendors those customers already rely on, is an unusually concrete traction signal for a company that only came out of stealth with its seed round. It also mirrors a pattern from Volkow’s earlier companies: Traffix and Otonomo both grew by embedding themselves into the infrastructure of large, risk-averse industries (telecom and automotive) rather than chasing smaller customers first.

The Investors Backing Ben Volkow’s Fourth Company

Bessemer Venture Partners’ decision to back QIZ marks the fourth time the firm has invested in a Volkow-led company, an unusually strong signal of investor confidence in a repeat founder. Seth Spergel, managing partner at Merlin Ventures, said federal agencies and large enterprises need a practical path to crypto-agility rather than simple awareness of the quantum threat. Dorit Dor, co-founder at Qbeat Ventures, described QIZ as entering the market at a pivotal moment, citing the combination of technical depth and clear market demand.

That combination of technical credibility, in Barmes’ Deloitte pedigree, and repeat-founder trust, in Volkow’s three prior companies, gave QIZ a level of investor conviction at seed stage that is more typical of a Series A round.

QIZ Security’s Position in the Post-Quantum Race

QIZ Security operates in an emerging category sometimes called cryptographic posture management, distinct from broader cybersecurity platforms that focus on network traffic or endpoint threats. Competitors and adjacent players include established cybersecurity vendors adding post-quantum features to existing platforms, as well as newer, more narrowly focused PQC startups.

QIZ’s differentiation is its API-first, agentless approach and its explicit focus on connecting cryptographic findings to organisational context, showing not just where weak encryption exists, but which applications and business processes depend on it. That context is what allows the platform to rank fixes by actual business impact rather than treating every finding as equally urgent, a distinction the company argues matters more as enterprises face years-long migration timelines rather than a single cutover event.

Leadership Style and What’s Next for QIZ Security

Volkow’s public comments about QIZ echo a theme that runs through his career: arriving at a problem before it becomes an obvious crisis. He has described post-quantum readiness as a board-level priority rather than a purely technical one, a framing that mirrors how he positioned Otonomo’s data strategy to automakers years before connected-vehicle data became a mainstream business concern.

With fresh seed capital and named enterprise customers already live, QIZ’s near-term roadmap centres on deepening its platform and expanding its partnerships with major cloud and security vendors, positioning the company to capture enterprise budgets as regulatory deadlines around post-quantum migration draw closer through the remainder of the decade.

Lessons for Entrepreneurs From Ben Volkow’s Career

Volkow’s path offers a few durable lessons for founders, particularly those building in infrastructure-heavy or regulated industries. First, his career shows the value of moving early into technical transitions before they become urgent, from mobile data in the 2000s to connected-vehicle data in the 2010s to post-quantum cryptography now. Second, each of his companies grew by embedding into the infrastructure of large, conservative industries rather than chasing fast, easy customers, a slower but more defensible path to enterprise revenue. Third, recruiting a co-founder with unimpeachable domain credibility, in this case Barmes’ Deloitte quantum-readiness pedigree, can do as much to earn investor trust at seed stage as the product itself.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Ben Volkow? Ben Volkow is the co-founder and CEO of QIZ Security, a post-quantum cybersecurity startup. He previously founded Sedona Networks, Traffix Communication Systems (acquired by F5 Networks), and Otonomo Technologies (Nasdaq-listed, later merged into Urgent.ly).

What does QIZ Security do? QIZ Security builds a cryptographic posture management platform that discovers, prioritizes, and helps remediate vulnerable encryption across enterprise systems, preparing organizations for the transition to quantum-safe cryptography.

How much funding has QIZ Security raised? QIZ Security raised a $17 million seed round announced on July 9, 2026, led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Merlin Ventures, with participation from Evolution Equity Partners, Qbeat Ventures, Singtel Innov8, and Qino Cyber Capital.

Who are QIZ Security’s co-founders? QIZ Security was co-founded by Ben Volkow (CEO), Lenny Ridel, and Dr. Itan Barmes, who previously led Deloitte’s Global Quantum Cyber Readiness Team and now serves as QIZ’s chief strategy officer.

What is “Q-Day”? Q-Day refers to the point, possibly as early as 2029, at which quantum computers become powerful enough to break the encryption standards that currently protect most digital systems, from banking to government communications.

Which industries does QIZ Security serve? QIZ Security says it has customers in financial services, telecommunications, healthcare, and critical infrastructure, and is building technology partnerships with vendors including Cisco, AWS, Google, CrowdStrike, Deloitte, and EY.

What companies did Ben Volkow found before QIZ Security? Before QIZ Security, Volkow founded Sedona Networks (acquired by Cisco), Traffix Communication Systems (acquired by F5 Networks for a reported $140 million), and Otonomo Technologies (Nasdaq: OTMO, later merged into Urgent.ly).

Where is QIZ Security based? QIZ Security operates from Ra’anana, Israel, and maintains a U.S. presence, reflecting Volkow’s pattern of building companies with both Israeli engineering talent and access to major Western enterprise markets.

Conclusion

Ben Volkow QIZ Security represents a founder returning to a familiar pattern: spotting an infrastructure-level problem years before it becomes an industry-wide emergency, then building the company built to solve it. With a $17 million seed round, a fourth investment from Bessemer Venture Partners, and enterprise customers already live across finance, telecom, healthcare, and critical infrastructure, QIZ enters the post-quantum cybersecurity race with more built-in credibility than most seed-stage startups. Whether Q-Day arrives in 2029 or later, QIZ is betting that the enterprises that start preparing now will be the ones still standing when it does.

For more founder journeys in deep tech and enterprise infrastructure, see Puru Rastogi’s Mowito, Andrew Berman’s Runlayer, and Leroy Kerry’s Filed on Denote Press.