McAfee Promotes Senior VP McClure To Global CTO

Before the CTO appointment, McClure also held the titles of general manager of the unit and senior VP of global threats and research at McAfee Labs. He is a prominent expert and author on hacking.

McClure succeeds George Kurtz, who resigned at the end of October to form his own company with the backing of Warburg Pincus, according to Reuters. In announcing Kurtz's departure, McAfee confirmed that Dmitri Alperovitch, vice president of threat research, had left the company. On Tuesday, CounterTack, a maker of software to fend off cyber-attacks, announced separately that Alperovitch had been appointed to the company's board.

Kurtz and Alperovitch left McAfee about eight months after Intel completed its $7.68 billion acquisition. Kurtz and McClure came to McAfee with the 2004 acquisition of Foundstone, a cyber-security services firm. McClure was president and CTO, while Kurtz was chief executive.

As a senior VP at McAfee, McClure led a team of elite hacking specialists the company called Threat Research and Counterintelligence Experts (TRACE). The team is responsible for conducting threat research in emerging electronic targets, such as cash registers, airport check-in kiosks, industrial control systems and ATMs.

"Stuart McClure brings tremendous experience and insight to his new role as worldwide CTO, especially with respect to the evolving threat landscape," Todd Gebhart, co-president of McAfee, said in a statement.