The director of cloud and virtualization solutions for Cisco's Security Technology Business Unit (STBU) has left Cisco for a position at rival Juniper.
Christofer Hoff, the popular blogger and security expert who first joined Cisco in June 2009, will start at Juniper on July 5. Sources close to Juniper confirmed Hoff's hire there, though declined to elaborate on what his exact role at Juniper will be.
Hoff himself disclosed his departure from Cisco on his Twitter feed (@beaker), and this week also confirmed his move to Juniper on his Rational Survivability blog.
"In case you haven't heard, I've decided to leave Cisco and journey over to the 'new' hotness that is Juniper," Hoff wrote. "The reasons: C'mon, really? OK: Lots of awesome people, innovative technology AND execution, a manageable size, some very interesting new challenges and the ever-present need to change the way the world thinks about, talks about and operationalizes 'security.'"
Cisco did not respond to requests for comment on Hoff's departure. Prior to Cisco, Hoff held top security executive positions at Unisys and Crossbeam Systems, and was also chief security officer and director of enterprise security services at WesCorp.
Hoff's move marks the latest in a continuing series of high-profile executive departures from Cisco, in the midst of an ongoing corporate restructuring affecting many of Cisco's key businesses. Juniper has already snagged its fair share of Cisco talent this year, including Luanne Tierney, who left her channels marketing post at Cisco for a similar role at Juniper in January, and also Nawaf Bitar, formerly vice president, engineering and operations for Cisco's STBU, and now Juniper's senior vice president and general manager, Emerging Technologies.
Cisco, for its part, has taken from Juniper, too. David Yen, formerly Juniper's executive vice president and general manager, Fabric and Switching Business Group, left Juniper to become Cisco's general manager and senior vice president, Server Access and Virtualization Technology Group in May.
