What’s trending

Abdullah Bahanshal moves from Honeywell to Lenovo as Country Manager for Saudi Arabia

Lenovo announced appointment of Abdullah Bahanshal as the new Country Manager for Saudi Arabia within Lenovo Infrastructure Solutions Group. In his new leadership role, Abdullah will be responsible for managing and growing country revenue within the Saudi Arabia. He will also support customers with insights backed by his years of experience in IT and Digital Transformation.

Abdullah brings with him over 20 years of experience in the ICT industry especially around leadership, strategic sales and development. He comes to Lenovo ISG from Honeywell, where he was the Country Sales Leader for the Productivity Solutions and Services sales team. He also focused on end user relationship through channel parties across the Saudi Arabia, while also developing country growth strategic plans.

Prior to that, he worked with global ICT brands like Huawei, Cisco Systems and Cerner. During his tenure at previous ICT firms, he won awards for performance, sales and strategy, while also being one of the first Saudi nationals to be certified as an ICF coach.

US Department of Defence veteran Kurt Gaudette joins Dragos as VP Global Threat Intelligence

Dragos, the global leader in cybersecurity for industrial controls systems and operational technology environments, announced it has appointed Kurt Gaudette as Vice President of Global Threat Intelligence. Gaudette brings more than 30 years of operational and technical intelligence experience to Dragos and will lead the company’s world-class team of adversary hunters, threat analysts, research engineers and analytic developers to discover, track, and disrupt threats to industrial control systems across the globe.

After transitioning from the military, Gaudette served as part of the US Department of Defence’s Senior Executive Service, leading large enterprise-level organisations focused on the collection and analysis of foreign intelligence ranging from space and weapons, to industrial control systems and emerging disruptive technologies. He has led globally distributed teams and organisations of up to 4,000 personnel, and executed budgets over $1B.

Sophos to global security services company, Infopercept as CMO

Infopercept Consulting, a global cybersecurity solutions and services company, announced the appointment of Jitendra Bulani as Chief Marketing Officer. Bulani brings 15 years of global marketing experience at cybersecurity companies. He will be responsible for driving awareness and demand for Infopercept’s offensive security, defensive security and security compliance solutions as well as services globally.

Prior to joining Infopercept, Bulani was at Sophos for more than 14 years where he was responsible for public relations and communications in India and SAARC, Middle East and Africa. Bulani was also one of the pioneering members of the global marketing team at Cyberoam, which was later acquired by Sophos.

The appointment comes three months after the company announced its CERT-In empanelment and association with National Centre of Excellence for SCADA, OT security acceleration programme.

Cenomi, Saudi Arabia’s largest vertically integrated retail and lifestyle ecosystem, has appointed three new Chief Technology and Information Officers dedicated to the implementation of world-class digital technology infrastructure. The appointment of three new CTIOs at Cenomi Group, Cenomi Centres and Cenomi Retail, further emphasizes the company’s commitment to adopting best-in-class technology to deliver next generation omnichannel retail and lifestyle experiences.

Binoo Joseph joins as CTIO of Cenomi Group, Lijo Kankapadan as CTIO, Cenomi Centres, with Sunil Nair taking on the role of CTIO for Cenomi Retail. The appointments further bolster the company’s continued drive to enable a new era of retail, shopping and entertainment for the Saudi Arabia of Saudi Arabia, supported by strong, innovative digital and technology infrastructure.

Binoo joins Cenomi Group with more than 20 years of multi-national experience as an exceptional technology, product and engineering leader. He has led teams and projects across India, the UK, the US, Europe, China, Singapore and the Middle East. Working with some of the world’s largest and most prominent retail, hospitality and technology companies, including Tesco, Wipro and Damac Properties, and most recently as CTIO of Emaar Group.

Mathias Bachsleitner appointed Infinigate’s EVP of Global Partnerships and Alliances

Infinigate, the value-add distributor of cybersecurity, secure networks and secure cloud solutions, is appointing Mathias Bachsleitner as EVP of Global Partnerships and Alliances. Mathias brings over fifteen years’ experience in international, strategic alliance management – including recent appointments at Orange Cyberdefense, SecureLink Group, NTT Security and Integralis.

In his role, Mathias will foster organic growth for Infinigate across EMEA by reinforcing strategic vendor partnerships, ramping and scaling rising vendors and forming new alliances. His mission is to complement and complete Infinigate’s cybersecurity portfolio, incorporating a wide range of leadingedge solutions for both the SME and enterprise segment.

Centrical, a leader in SaaS frontline employee performance eXperience management, has brought on recognised sales leader, Jayme Smithers as their new Chief Revenue Officer. As the Chief Revenue Officer at Centrical, Jayme, alongside the executive team will provide focus and strategy on go to market execution, scaling customer growth, and continuing to develop on the winning culture of Centrical’s revenue organisation.

A competitive, data driven, customer first CRO with over 25 years of experience, Jayme most recently helped to significantly scale ThoughtExchange’s growth and led them into new markets, brought in key investments, and helped them become the leader in community engagement across the Education sector. Previously, at NetSuite, Jayme helped innovate, grow, and scale key verticals as NetSuite became the standard Enterprise Resource Planning thanks to the introduction of new channels and a value-centric approach to the sales process.

Mathias will lead a central team, closely aligned to the existing regional teams and dedicated to delivering the best possible service to vendor partners, ensuring consistency of methodology and propagation of best practices across EMEA.

Ben Ezra moves from SafeBreach to Dig as Chief Product Officer to provide data security for cloud

Dig, the cloud data security leader, announced appointment of Yotam Ben Ezra as Chief Product Officer. Ben Ezra’s appointment comes amid Dig’s continued growth and expansion. As CPO, Ben Ezra will lead the development and direction of Dig’s products, helping Dig further its mission to provide data security at the speed of cloud. Dig helps organisations discover, classify, protect, and govern their cloud data without giving up cloud agility and speed.

Ben Ezra is a cybersecurity industry veteran with more than fifteen years of experience in product leadership roles. Prior to joining Dig, Ben Ezra served as the Chief Product Officer at SafeBreach, the pioneer in breach and attack simulation. He has held multiple leadership roles in research and product sectors at leading organisations including Radware and Check Point Software Technologies. Ben Ezra has a proven track record of leading teams through each step of a product’s development, research and development, product design and product marketing, to help organisations meet and exceed their business goals.

Delinea, a provider of Privileged Access Management solutions for seamless security, announced that David Castignola has joined the company as Chief Revenue Officer, leading the global sales organisation.

Castignola brings more than 25 years of leadership experience in cybersecurity, including 20 years at RSA culminating as the leader of the global sales team. While at RSA, he notably created and led the customer response program during the RSA SecurID breach. Following his time at RSA, he was the first CRO at Optiv and guided the acquisition of Cylance, then becoming Chief Operating Officer at BlackberryCylance. Most recently he doubled revenues over the past two years at crowd-sourced security provider Bugcrowd.

Ciena elevates David Rothenstein to Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer

Ciena, a networking systems, services and software company, announced appointment of David M Rothenstein as Senior Vice President, Chief Strategy Officer and Corporate Secretary. Rothenstein has served as Ciena’s senior vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary since November 2008, and as acting chief strategy officer since March 2022. He will continue to report to President and CEO Gary Smith.

In his new role, Rothenstein will lead Ciena’s strategic planning and implementation processes, and guide differentiated growth through corporate development activities, including mergers and acquisitions, strategic alliances and partnerships, and venture capital investments.

Prior to joining Ciena in 2001, Rothenstein practiced corporate, employment and technology law as well as business litigation at the law firm of Paley Rothman. He earned his Juris Doctor degree with honours from The George Washington University Law School and a Bachelor of Arts degree, magna cum laude, from Tufts University.

As part of the company’s leadership succession plan, Ciena concurrently promoted Sheela Kosaraju to senior vice president, general counsel and assistant secretary. Kosaraju joined Ciena in 2010 and has served as vice president, deputy general counsel and head of international legal since August 2020, and previously as vice president and associate general counsel.

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