vArmour Appoints Mark Weatherford as SVP, Chief Cybersecurity Strategist, and Dr. Matt Williamson As Chief Threat Defense Scientist

PRESS RELEASE

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — November 3, 2015 — vArmour, the data center security company that enables organizations to protect their virtualized and cloud assets in a multi-cloud world, today announced at the Open Networking User Group (ONUG) event at New York University the executive appointments of two industry luminaries who will help accelerate the company’s continued growth and technology leadership. Mark Weatherford joins the company as senior vice president and chief cybersecurity strategist, and Dr. Matthew Williamson joins the CTO office as chief threat defense scientist.

In the modern world of cyber warfare, you can’t fight cyber terrorists or protect critical assets with old security weapons. Cyber attackers are exploiting the shift in the federal sector and industries across the board to virtualization and cloud, bypassing traditional perimeter security controls that were designed prior to Google, Facebook and the iPhone. From 2006 to 2014, incidents in federal agencies alone have risen from 5,503 to 67,168, with 19 of 24 major agencies declaring cybersecurity a significant deficiency or material weakness for financial reporting purposes [1]. This problem cannot be solved with incremental improvements to perimeter-based security solutions, but requires a completely different approach to put software-based security controls in the right place within the data center. All organizations are at a stage of data center transformation, from the individual virtual data center to multi-cloud networks that are becoming standard today, and require both broad and deep distributed security controls that can be built into their multi-cloud infrastructure. These controls must be able to adapt as their environment evolves — and, more importantly, stop attacks once they are detected.

“vArmour is leading the industry in helping organizations across all sectors to build security in as they transform their on-premises data centers into multi-clouds,” said Tim Eades, CEO of vArmour. “Mark and Matt are the best leaders on the planet in their respective fields of expertise of federal and commercial cybersecurity and threat intelligence. Together, they will help fuel further adoption of vArmour’s patented, software-based Distributed Security System, to enable an unparalleled level of security protection for organizations across the globe.”

Mark Weatherford joins vArmour as senior vice president and chief cybersecurity strategist. He brings more than 20 years of security operations leadership and executive-level policy experience in some of the most important organizations in the world. Weatherford will focus on helping customers meet the evolving security needs of the cloud and 21^st century data centers, while expanding vArmour’s global customer base across all industries in the government and commercial markets. Mark’s past experience includes his role as a principal at The Chertoff Group (he still remains a senior advisor), where he worked with organizations around the world to understand corporate cyber risk and develop strategic enterprise security solutions. In 2011, President Obama appointed Weatherford as the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) first deputy under secretary for cybersecurity for a two-year period. Before DHS, he was the vice president and chief security officer at the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC). Prior to NERC, he was appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to serve as California’s first chief information security officer (CISO) and was also the first CISO for the State of Colorado, where two successive governors appointed him. A former cryptologist in the U.S. Navy, Weatherford led the Navy’s Computer Network Defense Operations and the Naval Computer Incident Response Team 

Dr. Matthew Williamson brings a wealth of experience in the areas of data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence, specifically applied to the fields of computer security and robotics. As vArmour’s chief threat defense scientist, he will be primarily responsible for advanced data analytics on the company’s threat defense system, developing algorithms to accurately detect malicious activity, visualize traffic and allow customers to understand and address issues in their data center and cloud deployments. Prior to vArmour, Williamson was director of technology at Rethink Robotics, where he invented the core technology used in their low-cost robot arms, and principal scientist at Sana Security, where he invented machine-learning techniques for detecting and removing malware. He has 15 issued patents and holds a doctorate degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“In government and private sector organizations across the globe, people, process, and tool resources are lagging behind the sophistication of today’s cyber threats. Too many organizations are still using 20^th century tools to fight a 21^stcentury adversary. I saw this firsthand in both the federal government and as a consultant at The Chertoff Group,” said Mark Weatherford, senior vice president and chief cybersecurity strategist at vArmour. “By empowering security professionals with software-based, distributed security tools and contextual data analytics, we enable them to visualize and protect digital assets and stop attacks wherever they reside. I’m thrilled to help vArmour lead the way on delivering this technology and helping enterprises around the world as they undergo their journey to data center transformation.”

About vArmour

Based in Mountain View, CA, vArmour is the data center security company that transforms how organizations protect their virtualized and cloud assets as they transform to a multi-cloud world. The company was founded in 2011 and is backed by top investors including Highland Capital Partners, Menlo Ventures, Columbus Nova Technology Partners, Citi Ventures, Work-Bench Ventures and Allegis Capital. vArmour’s Distributed Security System is deployed in a significant number of the world’s largest banks, telecom service providers, government agencies, healthcare providers, and retailers, and is leading the industry with a new patented, distributed approach to data security that allows organizations to deliver IT at the speed of business. Along with partners like Amazon and VMware, vArmour secures many of the largest data center and cloud environments in the world. Learn more at www.vArmour.com