Abaca's leaders bring decades of diverse experience and a history of success. Combining business acumen with technical savvy, these executives guide the company to create innovative products and solutions that enable a secure messaging environment for corporations, educational facilities, and other institutions.
Management Team
Steve Kirsch
CEO and Chairman of the Board
Steve is the Founder and Chairman of Abaca. He founded the company in 2005 with a vision to create the perfect email spam filter.
Steve has been involved with the Internet and high-tech companies for more than 27 years. Since the early 80s, he has founded four successful technology companies. Prior to Abaca, he founded Propel Software, the leader in Internet and email acceleration. Prior to that, he founded Infoseek Corporation, which was acquired by Disney in November of 1999. While at Infoseek, Steve was responsible for creating many of the company's award-winning products, including the NetSearch service, Ultraseek Server, Infoseek Express, GO Guides, and GO Auction.
Steve's first start up was Mouse Systems Corporation. Afterward, he founded Frame Technology, which was acquired by Adobe.
Steve is also an active philanthropist and together with his wife Michele, started a $75 million foundation, which donates to a wide variety of charitable causes. In 1999, Steve and Michele were named Outstanding Philanthropists of the Year by the Silicon Valley chapter of the National Society of Fund Raising Executives, and recognized by Slate Magazine as the 8th largest charitable givers in America.
Steve holds both B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
John Jefferies
General Manager and Chief Marketing Officer
John Jefferies career in Internet security spans more than 15 years, having held senior management positions at IronKey, RedCannon, Teros (acquired by Citrix), Differential (acquired by Valicert), Pario (acquired by Lucent) and Dascom (acquired by IBM). John joined Abaca from IronKey where he transformed the company into the leading enterprise and government solution. Prior to IronKey he was VP of Marketing at RedCannon Security which was selected as one of Gartner Group's cool companies for 2007. Mr. Jefferies obtained his MBA from the Ivey School of Business in London, Ontario and his BA in Business from Michigan State University.
Byron S. Lee
Vice President, Engineering
Byron S. Lee leads Abaca’s research and development team and is responsible for delivering the high quality software that drives Abaca’s cloud protection services and gateway servers. Lee is a seasoned executive with more than 25 years of engineering experience in the high technology market. Prior to joining Abaca, he served as vice president of engineering at M-Factor, acquired by DemandTec, where he led the development of their SaaS deployed marketing and predictive analytics solutions, including software development, QA, tools and infrastructure and data management. Byron previously held executive positions at Loglogic, AlphaDetail, Inc. and engineering positions at EPocrates, Inc. and Telleo. Byron holds an MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford and a BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from the University of California, Berkeley.
Frank Basso
Vice President of Online Operations
Frank Basso brings over 20 years extensive experience in the information technology and service industry and is responsible for architecting and operating Abaca’s highly reliable messaging infrastructure. He founded and remains a principal at Total Solutions Group, assisting companies in all aspects of network design, implementation, maintenance and expansion. While working at Proofpoint, Basso managed information technology and operations including SaaS services that consisted of 24/7 non-stop security applications delivered from three geographic disparate datacenters. He acted as an advisor for technology for Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca and oversaw the management of all datacom and telecom services and has held key positions with Zscaler, Inc., TKO Software, AirFlash, Webraska and Creative Computer Applications.
Andy Morris
Senior Director of Product Management
Andy is the voice of Abaca’s customers. He is responsible for ensuring that Abaca’s products and services exceed customers’ current expectations and future needs. Andy Morris’ career in security and system management spans more than 20 years, having held influential positions at Clearswift, IBM, CA, LogLogic and Micro Focus. Andy joined Abaca from Clearswift, where he transformed the company from a software vendor to one of appliances and managed services, shipping the world’s first AJAX based security device and the first email and web dual security appliances to share common management and user policy. Mr. Morris obtained his BSc Honors from DeMontford University, England, in Computer Science.
