5 Things To Know On New Trellix CEO Vishal Rao
Rao, who replaces Bryan Palma as CEO of the cybersecurity vendor, will also continue to serve as chief executive of Skyhigh Security.
Trellix announced that tech industry veteran Vishal Rao has been named its new CEO, replacing Bryan Palma.
Rao has served as CEO for nearly a year at Skyhigh Security, which has the same owner as Trellix, private equity firm Symphony Technology Group. Rao will now serve as chief executive of both companies.
[Related: Trellix Revamps Partner Program, Promotes Channel Exec In ‘Transformative’ Moves]
Following the merger of McAfee Enterprise and FireEye in 2021, the combined company was then split into two parts in 2022 — with the security service edge (SSE) division becoming Skyhigh Security. The remainder of the company, including the endpoint security and XDR (extended detection and response) businesses, became Trellix. The two companies have been operated legally as one corporate entity.
What follows are five things to know about new Trellix CEO Vishal Rao.
Veteran Executive
Rao brings experience from more than two decades in cloud and SaaS companies, including as CEO of Snow Software, which he led prior to joining Skyhigh as chief executive in March 2024.
Before joining Snow Software in 2019, earlier roles had included executive positions at companies such as Cloudera and Splunk.
Rao comes to the Trellix CEO role with an “outstanding track record of delivering results throughout his career,” said Marc Bala, managing director at Symphony Technology Group, in a quote included in a news release.
Priorities at Trellix
In the dual-CEO role at both Trellix and Skyhigh Security, Rao will be focused on accelerating capture of market share, according to the Trellix news release.
“To the Trellix and Skyhigh teams: I’m excited to work with you to build on the legacy of delivering solutions that protect our customers,” Rao wrote in a LinkedIn post.
The move likely brings Trellix closer to sister company Skyhigh, in a market where many competing vendors have moved toward building comprehensive, consolidated security platforms cutting across both SSE and XDR (extended detection and response).
IPO Experience
The news release noted that Rao brings a background in driving “material growth milestones and successful IPOs.”
Rao had served as vice president of worldwide field sales at Splunk in 2012, the year the company went public, and subsequently as senior vice president of field operations at Cloudera during its IPO in 2017.
Revamped Partner Focus
The appointment comes a week after Trellix unveiled a major channel program overhaul while also announcing the promotion of channel executive Kurt Mills to senior vice president and global channel chief.
For the revamp to the cybersecurity vendor’s Xtend Partner Program, essentially “everything has been changed,” Mills told CRN in a recent interview.
The new program is aimed at doubling down on partner enablement through an array of new investments, amid a massive “opportunity for us to increase some of our channel routes to market,” he said.
XDR Opportunity
Speaking with CRN recently, Palma said major growth areas for Trellix and its partners include XDR and NDR (network detection and response).
In terms of key areas of opportunity for partners in working with Trellix, XDR is “at or near the top of that list,” GuidePoint’s Mark Thornberry told CRN.
With Trellix bringing an increased focus on XDR, “that definitely makes them appealing as a solution for our customers,” said Thornberry, senior vice president for vendor management at GuidePoint, No. 39 on CRN’s Solution Provider 500 for 2024.
A fast-growing category in cybersecurity, XDR aims to provide enhanced security covering more than just endpoints, through correlating data from across an organization’s environments and devices and then prioritizing the most serious threats for a response.