Interview With Laura Garcia – CEO of RELIANOID by Shauli Zacks
Shauli Zacks
Published on: February 6, 2025
In a recent interview with SafetyDetectives, Laura Garcia, CEO of RELIANOID, shared insights into her extensive experience in IT and her leadership at the company. With over two decades in the industry, Laura has specialized in Open Source development and advancing load balancing technology within the Linux ecosystem. At RELIANOID, she leads a dedicated team focused on creating the most reliable load balancer on the market, ensuring seamless application delivery, robust security, and unmatched resilience for businesses worldwide.
Can you introduce yourself and talk about your role at RELIANOID?
I’m Laura Garcia, CEO at RELIANOID. With over 20 years of experience in IT, my expertise lies in Open Source development and advancing load balancing technology within the Linux ecosystem. Throughout my career, I’ve been deeply involved in developing high-performance, scalable, and secure networking solutions, contributing to the evolution of load balancing in Linux. At RELIANOID, I lead a talented team dedicated to our mission of creating the most reliable load balancer in the market—one that ensures seamless application delivery, robust security, and unmatched resilience for businesses worldwide. My role involves driving innovation, fostering Open Source collaboration, and pushing the boundaries of performance and security in network infrastructure. Additionally, I’m passionate about promoting diversity in tech and actively support initiatives to encourage and mentor women in STEM, advocating for greater inclusion and leadership opportunities in the industry.
For those not familiar with the company, what are its flagship features and what makes RELIANOID stand out?
At RELIANOID, our mission is clear—to create the most reliable load balancer on the market. What sets us apart is our unwavering focus on high availability, security, and performance, all built on an Open Source foundation. Unlike other vendors that rely on proprietary and closed systems, we embrace transparency, flexibility, and innovation, allowing businesses to have full control over their network infrastructure.
Our flagship features include a fully automated high-availability clustering system, deep security integration with advanced filtering and threat mitigation, and a scalable, multi-platform architecture that supports cloud, on-prem, and hybrid environments. We differentiate ourselves by eliminating vendor lock-in, offering enterprise-grade solutions without excessive licensing costs, and continuously evolving through Open Source collaboration.
By leveraging cutting-edge technology and a user-centric approach, we ensure that organizations can rely on RELIANOID to keep their applications available, secure, and highly efficient—even under the most demanding conditions.
With the rise of hybrid cloud infrastructures, how does RELIANOID ensure high availability and performance across diverse IT environments?
RELIANOID is designed as a fully software-based load balancer, which means it can be seamlessly integrated into any environment—whether on-premises, in the cloud, or across hybrid infrastructures. This flexibility ensures businesses can deploy our solution wherever they need without hardware constraints.
To guarantee high availability and performance across diverse IT environments, we provide scalability through multiple load balancing methods at different levels. Our solution supports routing-level distribution, Layer 4 transport-based balancing, Layer 7 application-aware balancing, and DNS-based global load balancing. This multi-layered approach allows us to efficiently distribute traffic for a broad range of applications and protocols, ensuring optimal resource utilization and minimal downtime.
Additionally, our advanced clustering and failover mechanisms maintain continuous service availability, preventing single points of failure. Whether managing traditional enterprise applications, cloud-native workloads, or large-scale distributed services, RELIANOID ensures reliable and high-performing traffic management across any infrastructure.
Security is a critical concern for application delivery. How do RELIANOID’s features, such as DDoS protection and Web Application Firewall (WAF), stand out in the current market?
Security is at the core of RELIANOID’s design. As an advanced application gateway and network load balancer, our flexibility allows seamless integration with a broad range of security methodologies, ensuring comprehensive protection against modern cyber threats. Unlike traditional load balancers, which offer limited security features, RELIANOID is built to actively safeguard application delivery at multiple levels.
Our security stack includes dynamic protection lists, a robust Web Application Firewall (WAF) for filtering malicious traffic, advanced DDoS mitigation rules, DNS blacklists to prevent access from known threats, and even Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) to enhance access control. This multi-layered approach enables businesses to enforce security policies tailored to their infrastructure and threat landscape.
What sets us apart is our ability to adapt to evolving threats while maintaining performance. Our security features are fully customizable and leverage Open Source intelligence, allowing enterprises to stay ahead of attacks without relying on proprietary, black-box security solutions. RELIANOID not only ensures high availability and load balancing but also acts as a first line of defense, securing applications and networks in hybrid, cloud, and on-prem environments.
What challenges do organizations face in achieving resilience in their IT systems, and how does RELIANOID address these issues?
Organizations today face significant challenges in maintaining resilience within their IT systems. The growing complexity of hybrid infrastructures, evolving cyber threats, and the need for seamless scalability make it difficult to ensure uninterrupted operations. Downtime, security breaches, and inefficient traffic management can severely impact business continuity and user experience.
To tackle these challenges, RELIANOID provides a flexible and robust load balancing solution designed to optimize availability, performance, and security. By supporting multiple load balancing methodologies we ensure efficient traffic management across diverse environments. Our security capabilities, such as intelligent threat mitigation and real-time failover, further strengthen system resilience against cyberattacks and unexpected failures.
One real-world example involved a company struggling with service outages due to unpredictable traffic surges. By implementing our solution, they achieved seamless workload distribution, eliminating downtime even under extreme loads. This allowed them to scale efficiently while maintaining optimal performance.
Beyond technology, our team is committed to rapid problem resolution and personalized support. We work closely with clients to identify potential risks, fine-tune configurations, and proactively address issues. Our goal is to provide not just a load balancing solution but a foundation for long-term IT resilience, ensuring systems remain secure, responsive, and highly available in any scenario.
Looking forward, what innovations or advancements is RELIANOID focusing on to stay ahead in the rapidly evolving field of application delivery and cybersecurity?
At RELIANOID, we’re constantly looking ahead to ensure we stay at the forefront of the rapidly evolving fields of application delivery and cybersecurity. To stay ahead of emerging trends and meet the growing needs of our customers, we’re focused on several key innovations and advancements.
One of our priorities is enhancing performance and efficiency, which is why we’re integrating HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 support. These protocols offer faster, more efficient data transfer, improving both application performance and the user experience, especially in environments with high traffic. Additionally, we’re implementing Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) to ensure robust security, adding an extra layer of protection against unauthorized access with two-factor authentication (2FA).
We’re also introducing new capabilities for zero downtime with hot restart features. This ensures that our users can perform updates and maintenance without any interruption to service, preserving continuous availability.
Furthermore, we’re exploring the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enhance security and configuration management. By leveraging AI, we aim to identify and mitigate potential threats in real time, while also automating configuration optimization to minimize human error and improve operational efficiency.
In all of these efforts, RELIANOID is committed to maintaining the balance between cutting-edge performance, robust security, and user flexibility, ensuring that we remain a trusted partner for businesses looking to optimize their application delivery and protect their infrastructure.
