eSentire names Gus Hunt, a former chief technology officer at CIA, and two others to advisory board

eSentire, a provider of active threat protection solutions and managed services, announced on January 23 that Ira (“Gus”) Hunt, a former chief technology officer at the Central Intelligence Agency, and two respected information security veterans — G. Mark Hardy and Mark McArdle — have joined the eSentire advisory board.

The newly-formed advisory board brings decades of frontline government and commercial information security industry experience, providing the eSentire executive leadership team with expert strategic guidance and counsel as the company navigates through unprecedented growth and surging demand.

“My nearly three decades of experience with the Central Intelligence Agency imprinted a strong recognition that firms must focus on their core business expertise and leave security to the experts,” said Hunt, who joins the eSentire advisory board following a 28-year career at the CIA. “And eSentire’s security as a service provides this expertise and continuous vigilance in an economically viable model for their clients.”

eSentire’s active threat protection services continuously monitor and defend enterprises from advanced, never-before-seen cyber threats and non-malware based attacks. The company’s Network Interceptor platform challenges legacy security approaches, combining behavior-based analytics, immediate mitigation and actionable intelligence on a 24×365 basis. eSentire’s dedicated team of security experts continuously monitors customer networks to detect and block cyber attacks in real-time.

“We welcome Gus, G. Mark and Mark to the eSentire board of advisors, and look forward to their valuable guidance and counsel as we expand our North American footprint and expand overseas,” said eSentire CEO, J. Paul Haynes.”These prominent information security industry veterans have built stellar careers in both public and private service, and we thank them for their many contributions as they join forces with eSentire.”

Gus Hunt currently serves as president and CEO of Hunt Technology, LLC, a consulting company focused on strategic IT planning, IT effectiveness and efficiency, cyber security, data-centric protection, and the cloud. He is a recently retired federal government senior executive, having served 28 years with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), most recently as the organization’s chief technology officer. As CTO, Hunt set the information technology strategic direction and future technology investment plan for CIA.

G. Mark Hardy is president of National Security Corporation, an information security consultancy he founded in 1988. Hardy has provided information security expertise to government, military, and commercial clients for more than 30 years. His professional background includes information security planning and policy development, managing security assessment and penetration teams, data encryption and authentication (including “breaking” commercial cryptographic algorithms), software development and strategic planning for e-commerce, and writing commercial risk assessment software. He has developed information security plans for four U.S. military commands, and wrote the communications security encryption requirements for an experimental military satellite program.

Mark McArdle holds six patents in Internet security and is a seasoned technology executive with more than 20 years of experience with top technology brands. After starting his career as a software developer, he moved to Silicon Valley in 1996 and joined PGP, Inc. PGP was acquired by McAfee in 1997 where McArdle remained for 11 years, assuming increasingly senior positions in enterprise, SMB and consumer product groups. He rose to the rank of senior vice president for McAfee’s consumer product development division, responsible for engineering and product management functions for the 400-employee division with products generating in excess of $650 million in annual revenue.