Global cybersecurity leader Forcepoint today announced Nico Popp has joined the company as Chief Product Officer (CPO). In this newly-created role, Popp will oversee the global execution and strategic evolution of Forcepoint’s behavioral-based cloud security platform. This will include leadership of all product development, management and innovation, such as Forcepoint X-Labs, at the company while also leading the strategic integration of the overall product and customer experience to empower Forcepoint’s global customers for success.
A cloud-technology veteran, Popp brings more than 15 years of cloud operations and product development experience to Forcepoint. He will be an integral leader in delivering on the company’s mission to be a trusted partner to enterprises and government agencies worldwide seeking a modern security-as-a-service platform to accelerate their digital transformations. In addition to taking responsibility for delivering Forcepoint’s vision across the existing portfolio, he will research, design and deliver new solutions to support customers facing the unique challenges posed by continual technology evolution and increasing cloud reliance.
“As organizations implement new digital transformation technologies, they face an exponential growth in ever-evolving security threats. Forcepoint uniquely understands this dynamic threat landscape through the lens of human behavior and is committed to dedicating significant resources towards the innovation of modern security solutions needed in today’s digital enterprise,” said Matthew Moynahan, CEO of Forcepoint. “As Chief Product Officer, Nico brings to Forcepoint a deep understanding of the cloud security market and the criticality of a customer-centric approach to innovative security product development. He has decades of experience building highly technical products and the teams behind them and will be a force-multiplier to advance adoption of Forcepoint’s dynamic cloud security platforms for data, users and networks with enterprises and government agencies worldwide. I am excited to partner with him to firmly establish Forcepoint as a modern cyber security leader.”
Popp joins Forcepoint from Symantec, where he was senior vice president of Cloud and Information Protection leading the data and cloud security product and engineering teams. In this role, he developed and introduced to market cloud-first products to capitalize on industry change, re-energizing declining sectors while leading a global team to fast growth and increased profitability. Prior to Symantec, Popp held senior leadership roles at Verisign where he led strategic management of VeriSign Identity Protection services, and had responsibility to define and create the open authentication initiative (OATH). He has also served as the technical founder and CTO at RealNames, Inc, and was the co-inventor of WebObjects at NeXT, Apple, still used as the primary cloud platform for iTunes, iCloud and the Apple store today. Popp holds more than 30 patents.
“The race to embrace digital transformation has created enormous opportunities for global enterprises today. However, with these significant gains in digital innovation and business productivity comes an added layer of security complexity. This complexity can only be addressed by moving traditional security to the cloud. Forcepoint is uniquely positioned to capture this industry shift towards security-as-a-service,” said Popp. “The new cloud capabilities which Forcepoint is introducing through its Dynamic Data Protection and Dynamic Edge Protection security platform present a very real opportunity for customers to derive the benefits of digital transformation, allowing them to accelerate business growth and desired business outcomes. This is a critical tipping point moment for the cybersecurity industry, as the legacy approaches to securing users and data must change. And with the industry’s most comprehensive portfolio available to customers today, Forcepoint is uniquely positioned to be the next recognized leader of global cybersecurity. There couldn’t be a better time to join this team and help drive forward the Forcepoint mission.”