Experienced cybersecurity executive joins IOActive as they deliver next generation innovative security research and services
October 12, 2023, SEATTLE, WA– IOActive, Inc., the worldwide leader in research-fueled security services, today announced that Gunter Ollmann joined the organization as Chief Technology Officer (CTO). In this role, Ollmann will focus on incubating and launching IOActive’s next generation of strategic security services and technology, expanding the innovative and industry-defining research and services that the company has been trailblazing for the past 25 years.
Ollmann comes on board at an exciting time as IOActive builds upon ongoing year-over-year growth and continues its expansion in ensuring their services best prepare organizations to stay ahead of the ever-evolving threatscape, increasing security and business resiliency against even the most formidable attackers. As CTO, he will play a key role in incubating new research-driven services and enhancing existing ones. Ollmann’s early focus will be on IOActive’s recent expansion of Silicon Security Services, honing in on silicon-level attack techniques that complement the advanced expertise IOActive developed in identifying potential embedded device attacks, leveraging techniques such as reverse engineering, fault injection, and side-channel analysis.
“Gunter’s broad knowledge of technology and security provides us with key perspectives as we build new ways to secure our clients’ organizations, products, and infrastructures. Technological innovations across AI, machine learning (ML), silicon, cloud, etc., are all playing an increasingly important role in an organization’s ecosystem and we are excited to continue ensuring our teams are building the most sophisticated tools, techniques, and knowledge to help our clients stay as secure and resilient as possible,” said Jennifer Sunshine Steffens, CEO of IOActive. “We are thrilled to have him on board as we continue our plans to elevate and commercialize our research and innovation.”
Ollmann has spent his career building and leading global consulting and product solutions spanning the cybersecurity domain and being an expert security advisor to Global 1000 companies. Prior to IOActive, Ollmann served as Chief Security Officer for Microsoft’s Cloud & AI Security division and led AI-based product and strategy for the leading vendors in the XDR (Vectra AI) and autonomous SOC/SIEM (Devo) spaces, incubating and driving multiple commercial products and services while protecting the world’s largest cloud applications and infrastructure. He has been at the forefront of applying ML and AI to cybersecurity for over a decade, holds multiple cyberthreat detection and mitigation patents, and has guided the innovation and patent process of hundreds of core technologies.
“Today, in-house security teams are defending an ever-expanding attack surface against an increasingly sophisticated and well-funded adversary, whilst having to compete globally for proven security expertise from an expensive and shrinking talent pool,” said Ollmann. “As Chief Technology Officer, I’m excited about helping lead the next stage of IOActive’s growth and innovation- delivering new cutting-edge security services and AI-assisted solutions whilst helping our clients and partners defend against today’s and tomorrow’s threats.”
About IOActive
IOActive is a trusted partner for Global 1000 enterprises, providing research-fueled security services across all industries. Our cutting-edge security teams provide highly specialized technical and programmatic services including full stack penetration testing, program efficacy assessments, and hardware hacking. IOActive brings a unique attacker’s perspective to every client engagement to maximize security investments and improve the security posture and operational resiliency of our clients. Founded in 1998, IOActive is headquartered in Seattle, WA with global operations.