Network Security, Built by the People Who've Done It Before
Firecradle is a product of Takelan, a Tampa-based enterprise technology company. It was designed by engineers with decades of hands-on experience in networking, firewalls, and cybersecurity - people who have written the packet-filtering engines, hardened the perimeters, and shipped the network security products that came before it.
Built on independence. Designed for resilience.
Technology should give people and businesses more control, not less.
Takelan has been in business since 2008, and it was built around a simple belief: the systems organizations depend on every day should be secure, resilient, and under their control. As businesses grew more dependent on interconnected infrastructure, cloud services and software, the cost of complexity grew with them. Critical systems got harder to manage, security got harder to maintain, and too many organizations ended up relying on tools that offered convenience at the expense of flexibility.
We saw an opportunity to build something different: infrastructure, security and data protection that work together, without unnecessary complexity.
From engineering to infrastructure
We build by understanding how systems actually work, finding where they fail, and designing solutions that stay dependable under real-world conditions. We focus on the fundamentals: reliability, performance, privacy, and the freedom to operate technology on your own terms.
An independent approach
Takelan is building a family of infrastructure and security products: ShadowCradle for backup and disaster recovery, Firecradle for network security, and VCradle for virtualization. Each solves a distinct need under one philosophy: make complex technology more manageable and critical systems more resilient. VCradle and Firecradle are in development.
Open, not locked in
We do not hide how we operate. We integrate with other tools, publish open documentation, and support full export and import in portable formats, so you are never held in place by a single vendor.
Built for what comes next
Infrastructure will become more distributed and threats will keep evolving. We build software that is secure by design, flexible by default, and dependable when it matters most, without making you give up control of your data, your systems or your direction.
Independent technology. Resilient infrastructure. Your systems, your control.
We did not start with a pitch deck.
We started with a problem.
What We Stand For
These are not company values written by a committee. They are the decisions we made when we had to choose between the easy path and the right one. They shape every architecture decision, every pricing call, and every line of code.
Cradle
"We have been in the war room. We know what works under pressure."
"If a non-specialist cannot set it up with the wizard, we have not finished building it."
"Capabilities are not meant to be upsells."
"Not a premium tier. Not a checkbox. The baseline."
"A detection engine you cannot explain is not security - it is a guess."
"We say plainly what Firecradle does and does not do today."
Built by Practitioners
Hands-on network security engineering experience on this team"We have been in the war room. We know what works under pressure."
Every person who designed Firecradle has personally hardened a network under pressure. The zone-based rule engine, the guided setup wizard, the signature-based detection engine - these were not features dreamed up in a product meeting. They came from scar tissue.
Simplicity is an Engineering Standard
Discovers interfaces, applies deny-by-default policy, configures VLANs"If a non-specialist cannot set it up with the wizard, we have not finished building it."
Complexity is technical debt we refuse to pass on to customers. When our setup wizard asks you three questions and configures interfaces, VLANs, and a deny-by-default policy automatically, that is not a sales demo trick. That is the product.
No Feature Tiers
VPN, cloud management and HA are part of the product design"Capabilities are not meant to be upsells."
The intent is that VPN is not a tier, cloud management is not a plugin, and multi-site failover is not an enterprise add-on. Pricing is still in development; request a quote.
Security as Default State
Deny-by-default: nothing passes unless a rule explicitly allows it"Not a premium tier. Not a checkbox. The baseline."
Deny-by-default firewall policy, TLS 1.3 everywhere, stateful DPI, and a hardened Ubuntu base image ship with every appliance. You do not configure security in Firecradle. It is already on.
Detection You Can Audit
Signature and rule-based detection - inspectable, not a black box"A detection engine you cannot explain is not security - it is a guess."
We optimise for detection you can inspect, not marketing about "AI-powered" security. Every alert traces back to a specific rule or signature you can read, tune, and trust - no black-box model deciding what is or is not a threat on your network. Every architecture decision starts with the question: can a network engineer explain why this fired?
Radical Honesty
Development status and feature scope stated openly"We say plainly what Firecradle does and does not do today."
If a configuration will not work for your use case, we tell you before you buy. Trust is built on truth - and truth compounds.
Leadership Team
People who have built network security and infrastructure systems - not just sold them.
Derek Demuro
Chief Technology OfficerArchitect. Builder. Two decades in networking & network security.
Derek has spent over two decades designing enterprise network infrastructure, firewall, and cybersecurity systems - not as an analyst, but as the engineer who built them. He worked at Replibit, an infrastructure appliance company later acquired by Axcient, where he spent nearly four years building distributed filesystems, high-availability infrastructure, and virtualization tooling in C++ and Python at the core engine level.
Over his career Derek has led engineering across products spanning firewall infrastructure, DNS threat protection, identity and authentication, and threat intelligence platforms. He has operated at every layer: from kernel-level filesystems and network stacks to distributed global infrastructure.
At Firecradle, Derek conceived and built the entire platform architecture: the deny-by-default policy engine, connection tracking and DPI pipeline, VLAN and routing stack, and signature-based threat detection engine, turning a deeply personal two-decade engineering journey into a single, unified appliance.
Andrew Bensinger
Chief Executive OfficerOperator. Builder. 20+ years at the intersection of infrastructure and engineering.
Andrew brings over 20 years of experience building and scaling network infrastructure products and engineering organizations. He has spent his career at the intersection of product leadership, systems engineering, and go-to-market execution - including holding 3 US patents in data resiliency technology covering automated image management and high-availability mirroring systems.
As VP of Engineering, Andrew led teams building resilient infrastructure for managed service providers and enterprises - the same audience Firecradle serves today. That deep technical background in systems consistency, automation, and infrastructure integrity directly informs every architectural decision Firecradle makes.
As CEO of Firecradle, Andrew translates two decades of practitioner insight into product strategy and customer success. He ensures every feature shipped solves a real problem - and that the total cost of ownership remains the industry's most compelling story.
Bruno Bense
Customer Engineering LeadEngineering practitioner. Customer advocate. Bridges product, support, and delivery.
Bruno brings a decade of hands-on experience in network infrastructure and enterprise IT platforms, with roots that run through the same technologies and teams that shaped Firecradle. He progressed from junior software engineer to escalation engineer at a leading enterprise IT platform, contributing to front-end and back-end of the flagship product and enabling PXE deployments that reduced hardware overhead for partners. He also built a driver injection utility from scratch for offline Windows recovery from a Linux toolkit - the exact kind of low-level problem Firecradle's engineering team still solves.
Before moving into software, Bruno spent three years in network consulting, assisting enterprise clients with network design and service continuity - the same focus that drives Firecradle's multi-site and high-availability architecture. Based in Montevideo, Uruguay, he is part of Takelan's engineering hub supporting Firecradle's development and global infrastructure operations.
Bruno Demuro
Chief Operating OfficerFounder. Operator. From surgical AI to wildfire detection - scale through execution.
Bruno Demuro is a serial entrepreneur and operator with over a decade of experience building and scaling technology companies from zero to revenue. He co-founded Armor Bionics in 2015, a medical AI company that created a cloud platform converting CT/MRI scans into 3D-printable surgical planning models - growing to a $3.5M annual revenue pipeline and partnerships with IBM, Ricoh, and Stratasys. He also founded Domotics, scaling it from a $25K investment to $300K in revenue and 5,000+ customers in under two years.
As COO of TheDevBlock, Bruno drove a 400% revenue increase in one year, built a product line from scratch (50x conversion rate improvement), and led operational, recruiting, and KPI systems across the organization. He has deep roots in Takelan - joining the team from 2010 - and brings both the entrepreneurial fire and the operational rigor that Firecradle needs to scale.
At Microsoft's AI for Good Lab, Bruno leads hardware and program management for an open-source AI and IoT system deployed across four continents for real-time environmental monitoring. He is a TEDx speaker and has been recognized for advancing value-based healthcare through AI.
Advisors
Practitioners who've been in the trenches and help us stay focused on what MSPs actually need.
John Hardwick
AdvisorMSP owner. 22+ years running managed IT services. Real-world network security in the field.
John is President of nXio, LLC., an MSP he has run since 2004 out of Lenexa, Kansas. With over two decades managing IT infrastructure for business clients - spanning networking, cybersecurity, firewalls, and cloud services - John represents the exact customer Firecradle is built for. Before nXio, he architected hosted Citrix and Active Directory infrastructure for 500+ remote users at EPIC Alliance and built scalable Microsoft/Citrix environments serving 2,000+ users at Imago ASP Systems. His ground-level perspective on what MSPs actually need keeps the Firecradle roadmap honest.
A Takelan Product
Firecradle is part of the Takelan product family - a Tampa-based enterprise software company in business since 2008. Takelan builds deep, integrated infrastructure products designed to eliminate operational complexity for managed service providers and enterprises. Every product in the ecosystem shares a common DNA: practical engineering and a relentless focus on operational simplicity.
Takelan Product Ecosystem