Digital Guardian Snags CA Technologies Security Leader As New CEO

Digital Guardian has landed CA Technologies security chief Mordecai ("Mo") Rosen as its new CEO and tasked him with growing the company's data and endpoint protection business.

The Waltham, Mass.-based cybersecurity vendor said that Rosen brings more than a quarter-century of high-tech senior leadership experience to the table. Rosen replaces Paul Ciriello, a board member who had served as interim CEO since October following the resignation of its ex-president and CEO, Ken Levine, for personal reasons.

"Mo is a world class executive with extensive experience in cybersecurity, managed security and SaaS, whose held senior leadership positions in both successful start-ups and large public technology companies," Ciriello said in a statement. "[We] truly believe his leadership will accelerate our growth, extend our brand, and deliver on our mission of securing the world's most sensitive information."

[Related: Digital Guardian Global Channel Chief Marcus Brown Leaves Company]

Rosen joined CA Technologies in August 2015 as part of its acquisition of Xceedium, where he had served as chief operating officer. While at CA, Rosen played an instrumental role in helping the company acquire application security testing vendor Veracode for $614 million in March 2017 and then selling it off to Thoma Bravo in November 2018 for $950 million.

Prior to joining Xceedium, Rosen spent three years as SVP of corporate development and strategy at NetSec, a leading MSSP acquired by MCI/Verizon.

"Digital Guardian is one of the top innovative companies in security today, and is leading the next generation of content-aware data and endpoint protection," Rosen said in a statement. "The company has just come off the most successful quarter and year in its history and is poised for its next stage of high growth."

Digital Guardian announcement Rosen's appointment Tuesday, nearly four months after Levine's resignation. Rosen wasn't immediately available for comment.

The company said Rosen will be responsible for aggressively expanding Digital Guardian's core data loss prevention business as well as extending the company's push into the rapidly growing endpoint detection and response (EDR) space.

An increased sense of urgency around protecting sensitive data and intellectual property from insider threats and outside attackers has driven significant growth for Digital Guardian, with the company adding more than 150 new customers globally in 2018. Digital Guardian has been offered hosting EDR since 2013, and today has a combined, cloud-based data loss prevention/EDR data protection platform.

"Mo is a seasoned industry veteran who has intimate knowledge of the infosec space, including emerging technologies and market dynamics," David Steines, Digital Guardian's chairman of the board, said in a statement. "His strategic vision and understanding for how cybersecurity will continue to evolve makes him the perfect leader for Digital Guardian."

Rosen will work alongside new Digital Guardian global channel chief Greg Cobb, who joined the company in September 2018 after spending two years as BlackBerry's U.S. director of sales. Cobb replaced Marcus Brown, who left Digital Guardian in August and started working in early 2019 as director of business development for Palo Alto Networks.

Digital Guardian increased the size of its global partner base by 18 percent last year and grew worldwide revenue through partners by 28 percent, Cobb wrote in his CRN 2019 Channel Chiefs profile. The firm also rolled out a global training and certification platform in 2018 that allows sales and technical talent to educate themselves on their own time, resulting in a 67 percent increase in partner certifications.

The company was founded in 2003, changed its name from Verdasys to Digital Guardian in August 2014, and has raised $138.5 million in seven rounds of outside funding, according to CrunchBase.