AlienVault grabs former Fortify execs as new leadership team

Barmak Meftah joins as CEO, Roger Thornton as CTO

Open source security information and event management (SIEM) AlienVault has hired a new leadership team, grabbing a number of security industry veterans from Fortify Software.

Joining AlienVault will be Barmak Meftah as president and chief executive officer and Roger Thornton as chief technology officer.

Meftah previously served as chief products officer at Fortify while Thornton incubated and founded Fortify at venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers. He served as its CTO and was a member of the board of directors. Thornton's previous roles include jobs at eBay, Taligent, which started as a project within Apple before being spun out into a joint venture with IBM, and Sun.

Both were in their roles at Fortify Software when it was acquired by HP in August 2010. Fortify provides Software Security Assurance products and is being integrated into HP's Software and Solutions business.

"AlienVault has a great team and incredible technology. Open Source Security Information Management (OSSIM) has surpassed 160,000 downloads, and is the most widely deployed SIEM on earth," said Meftah. "Customers love OSSIM and AlienVault SIEM products because with dozens of sophisticated open source tools tightly integrated and in the box, they get what is the world's first unified security management platform. This makes deployment of threat management and compliance projects fast and cost-effective."

AlienVault co-founder and current CEO Julio Casal will move to the role of GM of the managed security service provider unit, and Dominique Karg, co-founder and CTO, will lead the OSSIM community as chief hacking officer.

"Barmak and Roger are seasoned industry veterans who have demonstrated tremendous success at Fortify and bring the right mix of experience and energy required to lead AlienVault in the next stage of its growth," said Casal. "It's with great excitement that we welcome them aboard."

The company has also appointed more ex-Fortify members to its ranks. Jim Yares will join as executive vice president of global field operations, Richard Kirk will be senior vice president of international sales, John Richardson will become vice president of finance and administration, Jack Marshall will join as vice president of customer success and Gail Boddy will be VP of HR.

AlienVault recently hit the news for revealing that a new strain of the Sykipot malware is attacking US government agencies, specifically the smartcards used by Department of Defense employees.

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