McAfee Appoints New Worldwide CTO

In his new capacity, Fey will work closely with the leadership teams from the engineering, go-to-market and business units to guide the development and enhancement of security products. He will report directly to McAfee Co-President Todd Gebhart.

Fey joined McAfee in 2007 and most recently served as the head of the company's Field Engineering and Advanced Technology organizations.

[Related: McAfee Sees Biggest Malware Increase In Four Years ]

"We must think years ahead, and continuously innovate to keep businesses, governments and consumers safe," said Fey, in a prepared statement. "Recently, we’ve seen some incredibly sophisticated and targeted attacks that show the bad guys are smart, organized and driven. We must be even smarter, more organized and more driven. I'm looking forward to applying my skills to help develop the next generation of hardware-enhanced solutions, expanding our global threat intelligence network and further building out the Security Connected Platform.”

Meanwhile, the opportunity in the security space continues to rise. McAfee's most recent Threat Report has identified the largest increase in malware samples detected by the company in the last four years. New trends include mobile "drive-by downloads," the use of Twitter for control of mobile botnets and the emergence of mobile "ransomware." On another front, the BYOD phenomenon continues to open up new attack vectors, frequently because devices brought in from outside the enterprise are often improperly secured, or are used to access questionable Web resources.

Also, recent Gartner research predicts an 8.4 percent increase in security spend for 2012, with continued growth anticipated through 2016.

In addition to leading the technology drive to capitalize on these trends, Fey is also the lead author of “Security Battleground: an Executive Field Manual,” which was developed as a primer for IT executives who carry responsibility for information security.

PUBLISHED SEPT. 13, 2012