Phosphorus was founded in 2017 by Chris Rouland with a simple realization: the world was about to be flooded with connected devices—and no one was securing them properly.
After his third successful exit, Chris made an unsuccessful attempt to retire. He came across a University of Wisconsin research paper analyzing a large-scale IoT-based DDoS attack. Instead of just stopping the attack, the researchers studied it—and uncovered something surprising:
👉 The average “half-life” for firmware updates on IoT devices was seven years.
That meant most connected devices were running vulnerable software for years—long after exploits were known.
As Phosphorus engaged with early customers, a consistent pattern emerged:
• Organizations lacked accurate device inventory
• Default credentials were widespread
• Firmware, certificates, and configurations were largely unmanaged
In other words, before advanced security controls, most organizations were missing the fundamentals.
