Varonis made a business out of the files nobody thinks about: the spreadsheets, slide decks, emails and memos that pile up on company servers. Those files hold plans, finances and secrets, and most companies could not say who had access to them. Varonis built software that tracked every touch. It went public in early 2014, just as a string of big data breaches made that question urgent.

Data About the Data

Yakov Faitelson and Ohad Korkus started Varonis, incorporated in Delaware in November 2004. Faitelson ran the company and Korkus led its technology. Their Metadata Framework pulled data about data from a company's systems. It mapped which employees used which files, and how. Customers used it for security, archiving and cleanup. Varonis sold mostly through resellers and distributors. The bet was that the fastest-growing data in any company was the kind people made themselves.

Twenty-Two Dollars, Then Up

Varonis priced at $22 a share in late February 2014 and listed on Nasdaq as VRNS. The stock jumped in its first day of trading. Over the next decade the company kept selling data security as breaches and ransomware attacks made headlines. It later moved its customers from installed software to a cloud subscription. Faitelson still runs Varonis, and it is still public on Nasdaq.

Cover: The Sentinel, 3270 feet, Yosemite Valley, Mariposa County, Cal., from the series "Watkins' Pacific Coast", Carleton Watkins. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a sentinel rock standing guard (data security).