Appoints Rally Ventures Partner Michael Jennings as Board Chair, Netskope CIO & CSO, APAC David Fairman to Advisory Board, and several members to its leadership team
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 19, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Bugcrowd, the only multi-solution crowdsourced cybersecurity platform, today announced the appointment of Rally Ventures Partner and former Bugcrowd interim CEO Michael Jennings as Board Chair and Netskope APAC Chief Information Officer & Chief Security Officer David Fairman to its Advisory Board, along with a handful of top technology veterans to its leadership team. The appointments come at a time of significant expansion of the company’s global workforce and market depth of the platform, along with unprecedented revenue growth.
“I am thrilled to take on the additional responsibilities of the Board Chair role at Bugcrowd as they continue to pioneer the crowdsourced cybersecurity market,” said Jennings. “This is a pivotal point in the company, with unprecedented growth and expansion into new markets, and a fast-growing team of industry giants and elite hackers. I am proud to continue supporting them as they continue to usher in a new era of cybersecurity.”
Michael holds over 30 years in IT leadership and business development. Prior to joining Rally Ventures in 2018, he was CEO of Secure-24, a leading provider of comprehensive managed IT services, where he led the company through nearly 200% growth over 6 years and the successful sale to NTT Communications in 2018. He was also the co-founder, Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Business Development at Appshop, a leading provider of hosted Oracle application and database technology.
David Fairman has held leadership roles at NAB, Royal Bank of Canada, JP Morgan Chase and Royal Bank of Scotland and Fortune 500 companies across the UK & EU, North America and APAC. David holds a number of positions on boards of directors for various cyber and fraud tech companies and was a founding member of the Security Advisor Alliance, and the Canadian Cyber Threat Exchange. His ability to understand the operational risks arising from digital commerce and translate these into strategic actions has led to the transformation of organizational cyber risk posture around the globe.
“The security and resilience of internet services is imperative to ensure trust in today’s digital ecosystem. I value Bugcrowd’s mission and commitment to unlock the collective ingenuity of researchers to combat threat actors, working together as a community to make the digital world a safer place for business,” said Fairman, who also serves as Netskope’s Chief Information Officer for APAC. “I have personally seen the benefits of this as a Bugcrowd customer both in my current position and in previous roles and I am eager to join the Advisory Board, so that I can support the fast-growing team as they help customers stay ahead of today’s aggressive and persistent cyber threats.”
These appointments come during a time of fast workforce growth for the company, with new offices opening in San Francisco and New Hampshire, and key hires and promotions among the leadership team. This includes:
- Kent Wilson, Vice President of Global Public Sector Sales, is a seasoned cybersecurity leader with more than two decades of experience supporting the public sector. Kent served in the US Army with the 82nd Airborne as an infantry leader before turning his focus to cybersecurity. Kent excels in guiding early and growth-stage companies to establish high-performing public sector sales teams. He joins Bugcrowd from SimSpace Corporation, where he was VP of Sales Engineering. Prior to that, he held sales leadership roles at Bricata, Rapid7 and Symantec.
- Shyam Ramamurthy, Vice President of Engineering, has over three decades of experience as a technology leader, product builder and entrepreneur. Prior to Bugcrowd, he was a technology executive with Google leading the development of Android OS, Google Play and Google co-branded smartphones for emerging markets. Before his role at Google, he was a product and tech executive with organizations like Amazon and Yahoo where he built massively scalable AI/ML/Tech platforms across advertising, media, search and mobile tech ecosystems. As an entrepreneur, he also bootstrapped and successfully exited startups in the education-tech and financial-tech industries.
- Jennifer Hood, Vice President of People, is a seasoned HR executive with over two decades of experience across multiple industries – technology, healthcare and retail. Most recently, she served as SVP of HR at Red River, a technology transformation company where she oversaw employee engagement along with diversity, equity and inclusion.
- Michael Skelton, newly promoted Vice President of SecOps & Hacker Success, was previously Senior Director of Security Operations at Bugcrowd. Michael has a passion for helping maximize the productivity, engagement and growth of the Bugcrowd hacker community. He is a longtime leading expert in hacking and pentesting, and is also a co-organizer of security conference BSides Gold Coast, and SecTalks Gold Coast. Prior to joining Bugcrowd, Michael was a top hacker on the Bugcrowd platform, and made notable contributions to the bug hunting landscape, including being a co-author of Subfinder, which is widely used and appreciated among the broader cybersecurity community for its functionality.
“I am delighted to have both industry leaders Michael Jennings and David Fairman join the Bugcrowd team,” said Dave Gerry, Chief Executive Officer of Bugcrowd. “It’s vital to have the best, most seasoned leaders on our team in order to continue to accelerate our growth in an extremely fast-moving security market. These appointments, the hiring of Jenn, Kent, and Shyam, and the promotion of Michael demonstrate the massive opportunity we see for Bugcrowd, our customers, the hacker community and our incredible team.”
Bugcrowd is also thrilled to announce the grand opening of their second office in New Hampshire. The company is seizing the opportunity to hire incredible talent and the value of providing flexible options for teams to meet in-person, while also embracing the collaboration and flexibility of remote work, as they continue to commit to the team’s well-being and global productivity. This new physical presence in New Hampshire is indispensable to Bugcrowd, as it brings the company’s innovative, collaborative culture to the surrounding community.
Bugcrowd has experienced significant new business and revenue growth over the past year, ushering into the market new Pentesting-as-a-Service capabilities within the Bugcrowd Security Knowledge Platform and releasing new research on the impact of AI on hacking, pulling from its rich network of hackers paving the way for efficient security defenses.
To learn more about how the Bugcrowd Security Knowledge Platform can equip your organization to protect itself from cyber risk, click the link here.
About Bugcrowd
We are Bugcrowd. Since 2012, we’ve been empowering organizations to take back control and stay ahead of threat actors by uniting the collective ingenuity and expertise of our customers and trusted alliance of elite hackers, with our patented data and AI-powered Security Knowledge Platform™. Our network of hackers brings diverse expertise to uncover hidden weaknesses, adapting swiftly to evolving threats, even against zero-day exploits. With unmatched scalability and adaptability, our data and AI-driven CrowdMatch™ technology in our platform finds the perfect talent for your unique fight. We aim to create a new era of modern crowdsourced security that outpaces threat actors.
Unleash the ingenuity of the hacker community with Bugcrowd, visit www.bugcrowd.com. Read our blog.
Based in San Francisco, Bugcrowd is supported by Rally Ventures, Costanoa Ventures, Blackbird Ventures, Triangle Peak Partners, and others.
“Bugcrowd”, “CrowdMatch” and “Security Knowledge Platform” are trademarks of Bugcrowd Inc. and its subsidiaries. All other trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.
Contact
Nathaniel Hawthorne for Bugcrowd
Lumina Communications
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