CISO Summit at Black Hat USA

CEO and Co-Founder

Armis

Yevgeny Dibrov is the CEO and Co-Founder of Armis, the asset intelligence cybersecurity company. Yevgeny co-founded Armis with Nadir Izrael in 2015 to address a critical challenge businesses were facing and still are today — helping organizations continuously see, protect and manage all critical assets.

Yevgeny started his career in IT security in the Israeli Intelligence Corps’ renowned Unit 8200. Prior to founding Armis, Yevgeny held senior product management and business development roles at the cloud security startup Adallom, where he was also the first employee hired; Microsoft acquired Adallom in 2015 for $320 million.

Yevgeny is an active investor in security startups, including Epsagon, which was acquired by Cisco, and Trustdome, which was acquired by Zscaler. He holds a bachelor’s of science degree in computer engineering from Israel Institute of Technology.

In addition to being dedicated to protecting society and companies from cyberattacks, Yevgeny is passionate about social justice and equality. He is based in Tel Aviv, Israel, where he is actively involved in finding ways to improve lives and create opportunities in local communities.

CTO and Co-Founder

Armis

Nadir Izrael guides the technology vision for Armis. Drawing from his deep programming and software engineering expertise, he has overseen the rapid evolution of the Armis platform to provide complete asset visibility and security for every enterprise asset.

Nadir co-founded Armis in 2015 with his friend and army colleague, Yevgeny Dibrov, after the two started looking for new and interesting problems to solve in technology. Prior to founding Armis, Nadir spent four years as a senior software manager at Google, working on Google Maps and Google Autocomplete. He began his career in the Israel Defense Forces in the elite Unit 8200 intelligence corps where he served first as a software developer and then as a team leader, ultimately achieving the rank of captain.

Beyond helping to solve visibility and security challenges for connected assets, he is adept at creating simulations of particle systems and cosmological models, and is very experienced with machine learning algorithms and statistical models. Nadir holds Bachelor of Science degrees in computer science and physics from the Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, finishing summa cum laude.

CISO and Chief Advocacy Officer

Armis

As CISO and Chief Advocacy Officer, Curtis guides and advances the Armis enterprise vision, ensures the protection of the company’s information assets, and serves as a vital resource to his counterparts at Armis customers and throughout the technology sector.

Curtis brings more than 15 years of diversified information technology experience, with direct information security and management experience in positions of increasing responsibility at Sysco, a Fortune 50 corporation. As vice president and global CISO at Sysco, Curtis directed a portfolio of cost effective, business-focused security programs responsible for reducing security risks faced by a global organization. Curtis is an award winner of the Cyber Influencer Top 10 list by Enterprise Security Tech.

CEO & Founder

Gurucul

Saryu Nayyar is an internationally recognized cybersecurity expert, author, speaker and member of the Forbes Technology Council. She has more than 15 years of experience in the information security, identity and access management, IT risk and compliance, and security risk management sectors. She was named EY Entrepreneurial Winning Women in 2017. She has held leadership roles in security products and services strategy at Oracle, Simeio, Sun Microsystems, Vaau (acquired by Sun) and Disney. Saryu also spent several years in senior positions at the technology security and risk management practice of Ernst & Young. She is passionate about building disruptive technologies and has several patents pending for behavior analytics, anomaly detection and dynamic risk scoring inventions.

Executive Vice President Customer Success and CISO

Gurucul

Craig is an established security practitioner, with over 30 years of experience in the industry. Craig has been with Gurucul for over 13 years, leading Customer Success as well as acting as CISO. Prior to Gurucul, Craig has held numerous security leadership positions for Thrivent Financial, Lutheran Brotherhood, Stanton Group and Pohlad Financial Group. Craig went to the University of Minnesota and has a degree in Computer Technology.

CTO

Gurucul

Nilesh Dherange is responsible for development and execution of Gurucul’s technology vision. Nilesh brings a wealth of experience in inventing, designing, and building software from inception to release. Nilesh has been a technologist and leader at three startups and at one of the largest software development companies in the world. Prior to founding Gurucul, Nilesh was an integral member of a company that built a Roles and Compliance product acquired by Sun Microsystems. Nilesh was also a co-founder and VP of Engineering for BON Marketing Group where he conceptualized and created BON Ticker — an innovative patented bid management system which used predictive analytics to determine advertising bids for PPC marketing campaigns on search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN etc. Nilesh holds a B.A in Social Science, B.E in Computer Engineering from University of Mumbai and M.S in Computer Science from University of Southern California.

President and CEO

Qualys

As CEO, Sumedh leads the company’s vision and strategic direction. He joined Qualys in 2003 in engineering and grew within the company, taking various leadership roles focused on helping Qualys deliver on its platform vision. Since 2014, he has served as Chief Product Officer at Qualys, where he oversaw all things product, including engineering, development, product management, cloud operations, DevOps, and customer support. A product fanatic and engineer at heart, he is a driving force behind expanding the platform from Vulnerability Management into broader areas of security and compliance, helping customers consolidate their security stack. This includes the rollout of the game-changing VMDR (Vulnerability Management, Detection and Response) that continually detects and prevents risk to their systems, Multi-Vector EDR, which focuses on protecting endpoints as well as Container Security, Compliance and Web Application Security solutions. Sumedh was also instrumental in the build-up of multiple Qualys sites resulting in a global 24x7 follow-the-sun product team.

Chief Product Officer

Qualys

As Chief Product Officer of Qualys, Pinkesh has global responsibility for all Product Management, Product & UX Design, Product Marketing, Demand Generation, Branding, Analyst Relations, and other Marketing functions. An entrepreneurial product leader, Pinkesh brings more than 18 years of experience in building and launching category-defining technology products designed to deliver delight. Pinkesh has deep cybersecurity expertise and has led product, engineering, and marketing teams at companies including McAfee, BeyondTrust, Exabeam, netIQ, IBM, among others.

CISO

Qualys

Jonathan is the Chief Information Security Officer and Senior Vice President for Security Solution Architecture at Qualys. He has more than 20 years of experience in the cybersecurity industry, and his career spans operational CISO and infosec roles with the State of Colorado, Qualys, Optiv, and Microsoft. At Microsoft, Jonathan led the Detection and Response Team (DART), whose members responded to cyber security incidents around the globe ranging from cyber espionage initiated by nation-state actors to ransomware attacks.

Jonathan also serves as an advisor to several security startups and venture capital firms and supports the broader security community through his work with IANS. He is also an adjunct faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University, where he mentors and coaches those attending the CISO Executive Education Program. Jonathan is a frequent speaker at industry conferences such as Black Hat, RSA, and SANS and holds several industry certifications including the CISSP, OSCP, CCSP, and GCFA.

VP – Security Platforms & AT&T Fellow

AT&T Chief Security Organization

Current Responsibilities

Brian has responsibility for a wide variety of enterprise security activities including enterprise protections (e.g., firewall, proxy, WAF, email scanning), endpoint protections (e.g., anti-malware), data-centric security management (e.g., sensitive data discovery, data leakage protection), cloud security controls (e.g., configuration monitoring, vulnerability detection) and vulnerability management services (e.g., vulnerability scanning, vulnerability prioritization, reporting, patch tracking).

General Background

Brian has worked in various areas of information security since 1987. He joined AT&T in 1996 after 8 years of civilian service with the Department of Defense and has focused on security architecture, threat analysis, incident response, identity & access management, and enterprise security. He earned an BS in Electrical Engineering from Penn State University and MS in Electrical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University.

Brian and his wife, Jill, are originally from suburbs of Pittsburgh, PA where football ruled sports and the US steel industry was decimated in the 1980’s. They lived in Laurel, MD for 12 years before coming to Oak Ridge, NJ. They have two daughters (Rachel and Cara).

Brian enjoys a variety of physical activities such as mountain biking, fixing things, making things, and helping people.

Brian’s leadership advice: If training is required to use technology effectively and safely, it is a failure of the technology – not the user. Make the technology better.

His favorite quote is "In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is." ~ Yogi Berra

• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brexroad/
• ThreatTraq videos: http://techchannel.att.com/ThreatTraq
• Artificial Intelligence for Autonomous Networks (contributing author for book): https://www.crcpress.com/Artificial-Intelligence-for-Autonomous-Networks/Gilbert/p/book/9780815355311

Chief Experience Officer

LevelBlue

Scott Scheppers leads a team focused on protecting customers against dynamic cyber threats. Scott oversees execution of our managed security offers via our cyber talent in security operations centers around the globe.

Scott joined LevelBlue after serving 30 years in the US Air Force. In his last assignment, he was assigned to the National Security Agency where he was Chief Operating Officer of NSA’s Cybersecurity Operations Group. In that role, Scott led the civilian, military, and contractor workforce executing a national cyber defense mission. His team discovered and characterized cyber threats to the nation and responded to protect networks using countermeasures based on malware signature development.

VP of Product Innovation

With more than 20 years’ experience at Bitdefender, Andrei Pisau is a seasoned cybersecurity and product management expert, currently serving as the VP of Product Innovation. In this role, he oversees the Bitdefender Managed Services, driving the product and services portfolio growth. He leads a sizable team of cybersecurity professionals and collaborates with Bitdefender teams worldwide, to create cutting-edge technologies and products that protect numerous companies around the world against sophisticated cyberthreats.

Technical Solutions Director

Martin Zugec works as the Technical Solutions Director at Bitdefender, helping to protect the world from cybercrime. He has over 20 years of field experience, working as an architect on virtualization projects and traveling around the world. Combining his passion for storytelling with real-world experiences, Martin is a regular speaker at major industry conferences and a cybersecurity blogger. His talks span an array of subjects, encompassing everything from the tactics of threat actors and the evolving ransomware landscape to enhancing efficacy within security operations.

President, CEO and co-founder

CrowdStrike

George Kurtz is the CEO and founder of CrowdStrike, a leading provider of next-generation endpoint protection, threat intelligence, and services. Mr. Kurtz is an internationally recognized security expert, author, entrepreneur, and speaker. He has more than 30 years of experience in the security space, including extensive experience driving revenue growth and scaling organizations across the globe. His entrepreneurial background and ability to commercialize nascent technologies have enabled him to drive innovation to market throughout his career. His prior roles at McAfee, a $2.5 billion security company, include Worldwide Chief Technology Officer and GM as well as EVP of Enterprise.

Prior to joining McAfee, Mr. Kurtz started Foundstone in October 1999 as the founder and CEO responsible for recruiting the other founding team members. Foundstone, a worldwide security products and services company, had one of the leading incident response practices in the industry, and was acquired by McAfee in October of 2004. Mr. Kurtz has been quoted or featured in many major publications, media outlets, and television programs including CNN, Fox News, ABC World News, Bloomberg, CNBC, New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Associated Press, Network World, and many others. He also authored the best-selling security book of all time, Hacking Exposed: Network Security Secrets & Solutions.

President

CrowdStrike

Michael Sentonas serves as President and is responsible for CrowdStrike’s product and go-to-market functions, including its sales, marketing, product & engineering, threat intelligence, privacy & policy, corporate development, corporate strategy and CTO teams. A 20-plus year cybersecurity veteran, Mr. Sentonas is an active public authority on security issues and the evolving threat landscape, and is regularly featured as a speaker at key industry events, an expert source in the media, and a trusted advisor to governments and company boards, alike.

Having joined CrowdStrike in 2016, Mr. Sentonas has served in multiple leadership roles, including Vice President, Technology Strategy from May 2016 to February 2020 and Chief Technology Officer from February 2020 until his promotion to President in March 2023. Prior to CrowdStrike, Mr. Sentonas held multiple leadership roles at McAfee, serving as Chief Technology Officer – Security Connected, and Chief Technology and Strategy Officer Asia-Pacific.

Chief Information Security Officer

ReliaQuest

COL (retired) John Burger serves ReliaQuest as the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) overall responsible for the security of a global enterprise. In addition, he leads the Office of the CISO, a consultative group that provides peer-to-peer guidance to customers on risk, strategy, and best practice thought leadership. Prior to joining ReliaQuest, he served 27 years in multiple assignments including the CISO at the United States Central Command from 2010-2012. As the CISO, he directed the efforts of a 250-man internal staff and supporting units to protect and defend a warfighting network of over 1+ million devices in the Middle East. In 2012, he was selected as the Chief of Cyber Warfare (Joint Cyber Center) where he directed the cyber-attacks in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran.

ReliaQuest

Rick is an experienced cybersecurity leader with a background as a practitioner, CISO, and Forrester Research analyst. Rick runs the Threat Research team, ReliaQuest’s threat intelligence team. He also supports ReliaQuest's Office of the CISO. Rick is also a US Army Intelligence veteran and co-chairs the SANS Cyber Threat Intelligence Summit. Rick is a graduate of the University of Texas at Dallas.

President and CEO

Securonix

Kash Shaikh is the President and CEO of Securonix, a cybersecurity leader in AI-Reinforced Threat Detection, Investigation, and Response. With over 30 years of experience in executive roles across Fortune 50 and small-cap companies, Kash has a distinguished record of driving profitable growth in the software, SaaS, and AI infrastructure markets.

Kash is a dynamic, growth-oriented executive, known for his customer obsession and servant leadership. He has consistently delivered leading-edge technology solutions to enterprise customers, emphasizing innovation and strategic market expansion.

Before joining Securonix, Kash was the President and CEO at Virtana, an observability software company, where he successfully transformed the company to achieve sustained profitability and expanded into new segments such as FinOps and AIOps. He adeptly scaled the go-to-market strategy through channel-reselling and Managed Service Provider models, raised significant debt and equity investments, and spearheaded acquisitions and integrations to accelerate the product roadmap and increase the customer base.

Kash’s notable tenure at Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) as the Enterprise Solutions Business General Manager saw him driving significant operational efficiencies, expanding margins, and achieving a 28% CAGR over three years. His strategic initiatives, including scaling the go-to-market strategy through partnerships and expanding the customer base internationally, grew the business to approximately $2 billion profitably. In addition to his roles at Virtana and Dell, Kash has held leadership and executive positions at Ruckus Wireless (NASDAQ: RKUS), Hewlett Packard (NYSE: HP), Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO), and Nortel Networks (NASDAQ: NRTL).

His leadership excellence has been recognized with several awards, including the “Authentic Leader Award” from the National Diversity Council in 2021, the “Executive of the Year” Stevie Gold Award in 2022, and multiple recognitions from Comparably for leadership and company culture, such as “Best CEO” and “Best CEO for Women & Diversity” in 2022 and 2023.

Kash holds a Master of Science degree from Wichita State University and an MBA in General Management from Boise State University.

Chief Product Officer

Securonix

Haggai Polak is a seasoned product executive who brings over 25 years of experience building and leading product management and cross-functional teams, primarily in the security space. Haggai is extremely passionate about delivering results for both customers and shareholders through world-class products and services that are secure. He most recently served as Chief Product Officer at Skybox Security, a leader in cyber security exposure management, where he was responsible for the product portfolio, successfully helping some of the largest organizations in the world manage their security posture and vulnerability programs. Prior to joining Skybox, Haggai was F5 Networks’s Vice President, Product Management of their Security Business Unit, where his products contributed revenues in excess of $500M. He has also held product leadership roles at Zscaler and Blue Coat Systems.

President and Acting CEO

Joe Levy joined Sophos as CTO in February 2015, was promoted to President, Sophos Technology Group, in 2023, and is now the Acting CEO of Sophos, responsible for all aspects of Sophos’ strategic direction and business operations.

Joe brings more than 25 years of leadership and development expertise, focusing on cybersecurity. Prior to Sophos, Joe was CTO for Blue Coat Systems following the company’s May 2013 acquisition of security analytics pioneer Solera Networks, where he had served as CTO since 2008. Prior to Solera, Joe was CTO of SonicWALL where he led research and development teams with concentrations in the areas of next-generation firewalls, deep packet inspection, cryptography, and secure remote access.

Joe has participated in various industry certification and design consortiums, he is active with the venture community, he participates in cybersecurity industry boards, and he is the inventor of numerous security, networking, database, analytics, virtualization, and AI patents.

CISO

Ross McKerchar joined Sophos in 2007. Responsible for protecting Sophos, Ross is passionate about combining top-talent with innovative and cutting-edge products, tools & techniques to build a world-class cybersecurity program. Ross has led the internal cybersecurity at Sophos for several years, and has a BSc in Computer Science from Edinburgh University. Living and breathing security, Ross combines hands-on experience as an experienced practitioner with a top-down view.