Exabeam Promotes Pete Harteveld To CEO For AI SecOps Push

In an exclusive interview, Harteveld — who succeeds retiring CEO Chris O’Malley — says that Exabeam is ‘putting partners at the forefront’ amid massive opportunities in AI-powered security operations.

Exabeam has promoted industry veteran Pete Harteveld to become its new CEO as the vendor seeks to accelerate its momentum in AI-powered security operations with the help of the channel, the company told CRN.

Harteveld (pictured), who had been serving as Exabeam’s CRO since December 2024, succeeds retiring Exabeam chief executive Chris O’Malley. The appointment comes about 15 months after Exabeam and LogRhythm, which had long been two of the top vendors in the critical SIEM (security information and event management) segment, completed their merger under the Exabeam name.

In an exclusive interview with CRN, Harteveld said he will continue steering Exabeam in the partner-friendly direction laid out by O’Malley and Channel Chief Craig Patterson.

“I think the message to our partners is, [this is] a continued positive step for the organization in really putting partners at the forefront of how we go to market,” he said. “And every element of our organization — not just the go-to-market, but how we build our products, how we're making decisions on the roadmap — [that is all] aligned with supporting our partner success.”

While the competition is no doubt “fierce” among SecOps platforms right now, Harteveld said that Exabeam is positioning itself to vigorously compete with SIEM giants such as Cisco-owned Splunk, including through continuing its deep investments into AI. When it comes to AI and agentic, “I think you'll continue to see us be super aggressive at bringing innovations there,” he said.

Exabeam already stands out in the SecOps tools sector for AI advancements, including being an early adopter of agentic capabilities for SIEM, as well as for its deployment options spanning both cloud and on-premises environments, according to Harteveld.

The vendor is also differentiated through its standalone UEBA (user and entity behavior analytics) offering — focused on combatting pressing risks such as insider threats — which can work with SIEM platforms from other vendors in a complementary fashion, Harteveld said.

“Where we are unique is that if you have an existing SIEM like Splunk, we can [layer] our analytics capability on top of that SIEM,” he said. “So we can be a full-stack replacement, or we can enhance the investment that you've already made in your SIEM.”

As a result, for VARs and MSSPs, Exabeam can enable these partners “meet a customer where they want to be met,” Harteveld said.

Meanwhile, Exabeam was notably recognized as one of five “leaders” on SIEM in Gartner’s closely watched Magic Quadrant ranking, which was last released for the category in 2024.

The Partner Impact

Harteveld initially joined Exabeam to lead the integration of the company with LogRhythm, where O’Malley had been serving as CEO since 2022. Upon the closure of the merger, O’Malley was named CEO of the combined company as former Exabeam chief executive Adam Geller departed.

Earlier in his career, Harteveld held executive roles at companies including Compuware and CA Technologies.

More recently, Harteveld had served as CRO at Veracode and then in the same role at Aryaka. With the roles at the two channel-focused vendors, “I started to understand the role of partners and the impact that they play,” he said.

It was at Aryaka that Harteveld first worked with Patterson, who, it was clear, possessed expertise and a strong vision around working with partners.

After coming aboard at Exabeam, Harteveld said he realized there was much more the vendor could be doing with partners if the company could put in place a robust channel program — leading to the hire of Patterson in January.

In recent months, Exabeam has unveiled its new Apex Partner Program, which unifies the programs from Exabeam and LogRhythm while updating numerous aspects of its channel effort. Enhancements include a brand-new incentive package featuring revamped rebates, a new commercial model for MSSPs, a unified partner portal and refreshed training, Patterson told CRN previously.

SecOps Transformation

Looking ahead, Exabeam expects to continue doubling down on its work with VAR and MSSP partners, particularly as opportunities grow for delivering AI-fueled SecOps modernization for end customers, Harteveld said.

Exabeam’s technologies are also highly relevant for securing the usage of AI-powered technology itself, he noted.

For instance, while the company’s UEBA offering was originally intended to address insider threats from human employees, such risks will increasingly also include threats from AI agent “insiders,” Harteveld said.

Ultimately, Exabeam sees a huge opportunity ahead in enabling not just reactive SecOps but also in helping organizations to “look at security operations in a programmatic form,” he said.

“Everybody has detection engines, and they build dashboards, they surface information,” Harteveld said. “What we do that is a bit unique is our ability to define outcomes for a security operations team, and our ability to provide feedback on those defined outcomes.”

For Exabeam overall, “I look at those two pillars — AI and our ability to support the programmatic aspects of security operations — and that's where I think we do a really good job,” he said. “And from a technology standpoint, we’re doing this in ways where we always have our partners in mind.”