Security Superstars 2010

More than ever before, cybercriminals are going for a pay day as they hack into networks and steal credit card data and other personal information.

So it comes as no surprise that security products and services are a huge opportunity for solution providers. What’s more, industry regulations such as the PCI DSS, HIPAA and new state data protection laws coming from Nevada and Massachusetts are forcing companies both large and small to invest more seriously in security.



Rest assured the security industry has met these challenges head on. Today there are a myriad of seasoned security researchers, thought leaders and executives who are developing technologies and watching trends to keep one step ahead of the bad guys. Here we’ll highlight some of the superstars in the security space.

Also, don't miss:

Security Superstars 2010: Researchers

Security Superstars 2010: Visionaries

Jim Bidzos is considered a security founding father. From 1986 to 1999 he served as president and CEO of RSA Data Security and vice chairman until 2002. In 2008 he took center stage at Verisign, another company he founded, acting as interim CEO and president. Since then he has streamlined the businesses of Verisign in an effort to focus on its core Internet infrastructure products of identity and authentication, domain naming and SSL. In order to do this, Verisign has been selling off other businesses at a rapid clip.

The Taiwanese-born engineer co-founded Trend Micro in 1988 in Taiwan with her brother-in-law Steve Chang. Chen was named CEO in 2004 and before that served as executive vice president and CTO. Today Trend Micro is a successful antivirus security company with more than $1 billion in revenue, and under Chen’s leadership has helped build its business through strong channel relationships. Chen also bullishly pioneered the company's foray into the cloud-computing industry with the launch of the Smart Protection Network as the company continues to delve into cloud server security.

Graham Cluley is one of the world's leading experts on the issues of viruses and spam. In 1992 he helped to develop Dr. Solomon’s Anti-Virus Toolkit which was subsequently snapped up by Network Associates. Today he works as a senior technology consultant at Sophos, giving talks around the world on the state of threats.

Art Coviello has been the face of RSA and their venerable RSA Conference for the last 15 years. As president and CEO, Coviello helped establish RSA as a security leader and successfully transitioned the company when they were acquired by EMC. Since then he has articulated the vision of where security should sit in IT and how disparate technologies can work together to protect a company’s assets.

During the past three years David DeWalt has steered the McAfee ship toward double-digit sales growth with a record $1.6 billion in revenue in 2008. He initiated a series of acquisitions including Secure Computing, MX Logic, Reconnex, among others. He also spearheaded the company’s investment in technology companies and directed the growth of the McAfee Security Innovation Appliance. And DeWalt knows a thing or two about the channel. Prior to joining McAfee DeWalt managed customer operations and sales at EMC, where he was responsible for channels, alliances and partners, product sales, global accounts, vertical programs, and field business operations.

As the Channel Chief for Sophos Chris Doggett has expanded Sophos’ channel initiatives and increased channel resources to help VARs sell their suite of endpoint and data protection products. Last year under Doggett's watch the company introduced an online pricing, quoting and ordering system, a new partner portal and training and education program.



In addition, Doggett spearheaded a revamped financing program for Sophos channel partners, which established access to extended lines of credit that could then be provided to reseller partners of all sizes to create flexible payment terms with end user customers.



Doggett has been forceful about protecting partners' profits in the rough economy. He oversaw a new margin protection program, designed to protect and reward the first Sophos partner to bring a deal to the table.

With many industry standards and state laws mandating encryption, PGP is in the enviable position as a leading encryption manufacturer. Phil Dunkelberger is leading this charge as president and CEO of PGP. As an advocate for security in Washington Dunkleberger has worked closely with legislators and serves as chairman of TechAmerica’s Cybersecurity CxO Council and is on the TechNet CEO Cybersecurity Task Force.

As the CEO and founder of one of the first security-only integrators, Gary Fish has helped grow and lead the organization which was founded in 1996 and has grown to revenues of over $200 million annually. The solutions provider recently rounded out its offerings with the acquisition of SiegeWorks LLC and True North Solutions and today has 26 offices and nearly 300 employees.

Hansen certainly knows a thing or two about technology, as he was previously CA's CIO. Today Hansen's focus lies in security. As head of CA's Security and Business Compliance Business Unit, Hansen is charged with overseeing the company's efforts in identity and access management, and security information management technologies.

Hoff is a prolific blogger on information security with his Rational Survivability blog. He brings an honest perspective about the challenges security pros face when it comes to network security and risk management. He speaks with confidence because he has worn many different hats over the years, from a CISO to his latest gig as director of Cloud and Virtualization Solutions at Cisco. Today his passion is cloud security and he is a founding member and technical advisor for the Cloud Security Alliance, a group formed to establish guidance and best practices for secure cloud adoption.

As the Executive VP of Products and Marketing for netForensics, Tracy Hulver is responsible for driving product strategy and all aspects of the company's global marketing presence. As an authority on cyber attacks and security intelligence, Hulver lectures internationally on helping organizations understand how to identify and prevent attacks that threaten their valuable data. He is a member of the Computer Security Institute, the National Cyber Security Alliance and recently served on the Department of Homeland Security’s National Cyber Security Task Force.

As the new global channel chief at Websense, Matt is responsible for leading and growing Websense global channel sales efforts, which include VARs, direct marketers, and federal resellers. Prior to joining Websense, Matt was the vice president of worldwide channel sales at ArcSight. He has also held senior channel positions at both McAfee and Sun Microsystems. Matt has vast experience in channel sales and a proven track record for helping partners increase their revenues and profits. He reports directly to Websense Executive Vice President of Global Sales Didier Guibal.

Dr. Paul Judge is a leading security technologist, having been awarded six U.S. patents and 19 other patents pending. He is a recognized authority on Internet security and most recently founded PureWire, a SaaS-based Web gateway provider acquired by Barracuda Networks in October. Previously, Judge was on the founding team of CipherTrust as CTO until Secure Computing acquired them for $300 million in 2006.

Eugene Kaspersky started out by developing a disinfection utility for simple virus detection in the mid-90s. Flash forward 15 years and the Moscow-based company has turned into international security company Kaspersky Lab, which today includes an antivirus database of more than 1.3 million records. Kapsersky Lab was established in 1997 and Eugene Kaspersky has headed the research there for 10 years until he became CEO in 2007. Since he took the helm, Kaspersky Lab moved from a struggling anti-virus company to one of the leading endpoint security companies in the world, now rivaling third largest security company Trend Micro with more than six percent marketshare. Kaspersky is also a laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation, and a member of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation.

Steve Lipner is the technical security face at Microsoft, named as inventor on thirteen U.S. patents in the field of computer and network security. He is responsible for defining the Security Development Lifecycle which aims to develop and code with security in mind so programming errors do not open the door to outside attack. Lipner has more than 35 years experience as a researcher and manager in IT security.

Since 2003 Matt Medeiros is CEO of SonicWall, a company that has embraced the channel. He joined SonicWall in 2003 and prior to joining Sonicwall, Medeiros had served as President and CEO of Philips Components and established Philips as a leader in flat displays. He has held executive positions at Radius, NeXT Computer and Apple.

Perry has long been considered a leading authority on virus prevention, malware and security education with more than 25 years experience in the field. As the Global Director of Education for Trend Micro, Perry is the face of research at Trend Micro, providing insight into attacks such as last year’s Conficker. Perry was also on hand in Washington D.C. at the end of 1999 during the Y2K vigilance, providing his services as a computer virus expert for the President's Task Force on Y2K Issues.

Marty Roesch created the popular open-source intrusion detection system Snort and founded SourceFire in 2001 as a way to broaden its IDS platform and bring it to enterprises. Roesch has more than 17 years experience in network security and has developed security tools and technologies for organizations such as the Department of Defense.

Salem is the newly appointed CEO of security behemoth Symantec after serving there for 16 years in various roles. Salem brings a wealth of executive management experience as the CEO of Brightmail, a leading anti-spam company and SVP of Oblix. Prior to Oblix he was responsible for the IT operation of Ask Jeeves. Salem originally joined Symantec through the Peter Norton Computing acquisition and was the company’s first CTO.

Schmidt was recently appointed as the new cybersecurity czar for the Obama Administration but brings more than 40 years experience in defense, law enforcement and corporate security. Schmidt previously served in the Bush Administration as Special Advisor for Cyberspace Security and Vice Chair of the President’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Board. He also worked on the corporate side where he was CISO for eBay and CSO for Microsoft.

Shwed has been a permanent fixture in information security, serving as CEO for CheckPoint since 1993 at the age of 25. He is credited with developing one of the first firewalls based on stateful inspection technology, an idea that came to him during his years in the Israeli Defense Forces. Checkpoint is also a pioneer of virtual private networks, developing one of the first VPNs.

Richard Steinnon is known for shaking up the industry and providing actionable guidance to vendors and end users. He recently re-launched the security blog ThreatChaos.com and is the founder of IT-Harvest, an independent analyst firm that researches the more than 1,200 IT security vendors in the market. He was chief marketing officer for Fortinet, and prior to that was VP Threat Research at Webroot Software. Stiennon has also held the position as VP Research at Gartner, where he covered security topics including firewalls, intrusion detection, intrusion prevention, security consulting, and managed security services for the Security and Privacy group.

As nCircle's Director of Security Operations, Andrew Storms is responsible for the enforcement of the company's security compliance programs as well as overseeing day-to-day operations for the Information Technology department.



He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and a member of FBI InfraGard.

As vice president of research and intelligence for Verizon Business and chief scientist of ICSA Labs, Dr. Tippett is regarded as a top security thinker. He is best known for his creation of enterprise risk metrics and widely credited with creating the first commercial AV product that later became Norton Anti-Virus. He was CTO of Cybertrust, Chairman of truSecure and in the early 90’s directed the enterprise and security products group at Symantec. During the early 80's. Tippett ran one of the largest open-source (shareware) bulletin boards.

As Chief Research Officer for AVG, Thompson leads a global team of security researchers and is an expert on forensics issues. Prior to his current role, he co-founded Exploit Prevention Labs in 2005 and has headed the malware research operations for security industry leaders ICSA, PestPatrol and Computer Associates (CA).

Stephen Trilling is senior vice president of Security Technology and Response at Symantec, overseeing security content solutions and various technology components. A leading expert on Internet security issues, Trilling has published many technical papers on virus-related issues.



Prior to his current role with Security Technology and Response, Trilling was the vice president of Research and Advanced Development at Symantec where he oversaw internally funded research, Advanced Concepts, university research and government research. He has also served as director of research for Symantec Security Response, previously named Symantec AntiVirus Research Center (SARC).

Michael Valentine has more than 20 years of sales and channel experience. Since joining Fortinet he expanded the company's network of North America technology distributors, signed more than 700 new Americas partners, grew the internal channel team by 82 percent and updated the award-winning FortiPartner Program with a stronger enterprise focus. Prior to joining Fortinet, Michael held vice president of Americas sales positions at both SonicWALL and WatchGuard Technologies, as well as senior sales positions at Panasonic.