Tufin went private for a dollar less than its IPO price. In between, it sold a fix for a quiet mess inside large companies. Big firms ran hundreds of firewalls from different vendors, each stuffed with rules nobody remembered writing. One wrong change could cut off a business or open a hole for attackers. Tufin's software mapped those rules, tested changes before they went live, and kept a record for auditors. When it filed in 2019, more than 2,000 customers in over 70 countries had bought it.

One Console for Every Wall

Ruvi Kitov and Reuven Harrison founded Tufin in Israel in 2005. Firewalls from Cisco, Check Point, and Palo Alto Networks each had their own tools, and security teams changed rules by hand. Tufin sat on top of all of them. Its suite showed how traffic could flow across the network and automated the routine requests that piled up in IT queues. It sold mostly perpetual licenses plus maintenance to banks, telecoms, and other large firms.

Fourteen In, Thirteen Out

Tufin priced its IPO at $14 a share on April 11, 2019, and listed on the NYSE as TUFN. As a public company it struggled to keep growth steady while it shifted toward subscriptions, and the stock spent long stretches below its offering price. In April 2022 private equity firm Turn/River Capital agreed to buy Tufin for $13 a share in cash, valuing it at about $570 million. The deal closed in August 2022, and Tufin left the NYSE.

Cover: Exterior View of the Italian Gate of the Ramparts of the Town of Dresden, Bernardo Bellotto. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a gate in city ramparts (the firewall).