F5 names Mike Convertino as chief information security officer

F5 Networks announced on January 25 the hire of Mike Convertino to lead its Information Security team. As the company’s first Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), Convertino’s first priority is the continued protection of company and customer assets and data. He will also play a lead role in the development of Seattle, WA-based F5’s security product roadmap and represent F5 in the IT industry and wider security community. Convertino started on January 18 and is based in Seattle at F5’s headquarters.

“With our focus on application access, F5 holds a unique vantage point on security,” said Tony Bozzuti, senior vice president and chief information officer at F5. “We see the enormous risk applications are exposed to as users and data travel from device to data center and back again. What Mike Convertino brings to F5 is both deep experience and strong leadership to help our own operations, our partners, and our customers take the best advantage of our application-level security.”

Convertino brings to F5 nearly 30 years of experience in providing enterprise-level information security, cloud-grade information systems solutions, and advanced cyber capability development. His professional experience spans security leadership and product development at a wide array of organizations including the U.S. government, Fortune 500 companies, and security start-ups. Prior to joining F5, Convertino was previously the Chief Information Security Officer at CrowdStrike, where he was responsible for the security of both CrowdStrike’s corporate network and its product platform. He established the CrowdStrike Security Operations Center and developed new security technologies to meld the best of traditional IT security with the latest security in DevOps models for cloud environments.

Before CrowdStrike, Convertino was the senior director of network security at Microsoft, where he was responsible for protecting the company’s networks from intrusion and exploitation. In this role, he was responsible for leading a team of digital forensic professionals maintaining internal Microsoft security policies, as well as an extensive intrusion detection and security engineering team.

Prior to his work at Microsoft, Convertino was a Colonel in the U.S. Air Force responsible for a unit of over 600 telecommunications, computer, signals intelligence, and information operations personnel, developing cyber capabilities for the Department of Defense. During his time in service, he served both as a Squadron and Group Commander and on the Joint Staff in the Pentagon.

Convertino holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering (BSEE) and Master’s degrees in Management Information Systems from Webster University and in International Security Studies from the U.S. Air Force. He has been a featured industry and government speaker at DoD Cybercrime, GFIRST, RSA, Black Hat and DEFCON, and U.S. Attorney’s Office conferences on topics in risk management, intrusion detection, and cyber policy.

Source: F5