Dean Drako

Chief Executive Officer Brivo

Last Reviewed: September 28, 2026

Executive Summary

Dean Drako is Chief Executive Officer of Brivo, the cloud-native physical security company formed in December 2025 when he merged Brivo, the access control business he had owned since 2015, with Eagle Eye Networks, the cloud video surveillance company he founded in 2012. Brivo had been one of the first to sell access control as a cloud service. The merger put its access control and Eagle Eye’s AI video under one company, with offices in Bethesda, Austin, Lehi, Amsterdam, Bangalore and Tokyo. It was the latest step in a career spent founding and running engineering-led companies. Before physical security he founded Barracuda Networks, whose email security appliance helped create that market, and before that the semiconductor design tools company Design Acceleration.

Career Highlights

• CEO of Brivo following its December 2025 merger with Eagle Eye Networks, with Brivo founder Steve Van Till as President.
• Acquired Brivo outright for $50 million in June 2015 and served as its chairman for the decade that followed.
• Founded Eagle Eye Networks, a cloud video surveillance company, in 2012 and led it as CEO.
• Founder, President and CEO of Barracuda Networks, where he created the first email security appliance in 2003 and grew the company to more than $200 million in annual sales and 150,000 customers by 2012.
• CEO of IC Manage, a semiconductor design tools company, from its founding in 2003, and earlier founder, President and CEO of Design Acceleration, Inc.
• Ernst & Young Northern California Entrepreneur of the Year in 2007; named one of Goldman Sachs’s 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs of 2014.

Professional Journey

Drako trained as an electrical engineer, with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and a master’s from UC Berkeley. His first companies were in semiconductor design. He founded Design Acceleration, Inc., a design analysis and verification tools provider, as its President and CEO, and in 2003 co-founded IC Manage, which provides design and IP management tools for chip developers. He has led IC Manage as CEO since its founding.

Also in 2003 he founded Barracuda Networks, whose first product was an email security appliance, the first of its kind. As founder, President and CEO he built Barracuda into a leading IT security vendor for mid-market businesses. By 2012 it had more than $200 million in annual sales and 150,000 customers, and it went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2013.

He left the Barracuda executive role in 2012 to found Eagle Eye Networks, which delivers video surveillance as a cloud service rather than on local recorders. In April 2015 Eagle Eye formed an alliance with Brivo, a Bethesda, Maryland company founded in 1999 that had brought cloud management to commercial access control. Two months later Drako bought Brivo outright for $50 million and became its chairman, while Steve Van Till continued to lead it. For the next decade the two companies had the same owner but operated separately, and their products were integrated so customers could manage access control and video together.

On 29 December 2025 Drako announced that the two companies would merge under the Brivo name, with one support organisation, one commercial relationship and a single product, the Brivo Security Suite, covering AI, access control, video intelligence, visitor management and intrusion. He became CEO of the combined company and Van Till became President. Since the merger Drako has led Brivo’s expansion into the UK, including a new London regional office announced in April 2026, and its push into AI-driven security.

Education

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

B.S.E.E., Electrical Engineering

University of California, Berkeley

M.S.E.E., Electrical Engineering