At Threat.Technology we track over 100,000 infosec, cyber security, military and cyber startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top California, United States based Principal operating in the Cyber Security space. If you think a Principal is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on [email protected].
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Ranjan Bagchi
Principal Software Engineer of Palo Alto Networks
Ranjan has over 20+ years professional development experience, specialized in distributed systems across a variety of business domains. He has built everything from LinkedIn’s social profile backend to high-performance hedge fund trading systems. Most recently, he lead the development of Big Data scale social analytics for retail CMOs at Bazaarvoice. He has a BS in Math and CS (concentration in AI) from the University of Michigan. He enjoys exploring San Francisco with his German Shepherd, and brushing up on machine learning and statistics on Coursera.
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About Palo Alto Networks: Palo Alto Networks is a multinational cybersecurity company that offers cybersecurity solutions for organizations.
Chris Honaker
Principal Product Security Architect of Palo Alto Networks
Chris Honaker is responsible for reducing the attack surface of Palo Alto Networks products and services. Chris has twenty plus years of experience in software engineering and security ranging from hardware security products to global software as a service platforms.
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About Palo Alto Networks: Palo Alto Networks is a multinational cybersecurity company that offers cybersecurity solutions for organizations.
Andrew Manoske
Principal Product Manager – Cryptography and Security Products of HashiCorp
Andy is an experienced product leader whose career bridges across infrastructure technology and venture capital. At HashiCorp he manages product development for Vault, HashiCorp’s secrets management and cryptography suite. Previously he led the design and development of OTX (Open Threat Exchange), the world’s largest open-source threat intelligence network, at AlienVault and managed cryptography and product security at NetApp as the youngest product manager in the company’s history. He also formerly served on the investment teams of Amplify Partners as well as Shanghai/Sand Hill Road-based GGV Capital. Andy holds degrees in Computer Science and Economics from San Jose State University.
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About HashiCorp: HashiCorp is a remote-first company that solves development, security, and operations challenges in infrastructure.
Saad Siddiqui
Principal of Telstra Ventures
Saad joined Telstra Ventures in 2016 and is based in San Francisco. Previously, he was part of the corporate development team at Informatica, where he led various aspects of acquisitions, venture investments and partnerships. Prior to this, Saad was part of Cisco Ventures & Corporate Development, where he covered investments and acquisitions of infrastructure software. Before moving to the San Francisco Bay area, he worked in investment banking at RBC Capital Markets and Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Saad holds a BSc in Finance from Rutgers University.
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About Telstra Ventures: Telstra Ventures invests in technology companies and offers synergy revenues to its portfolio companies.
Grace Chou
Principal of Felicis Ventures
Grace Chou is a principal at Felicis Ventures.
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About Felicis Ventures: Felicis invests in seed through Series C stage companies across multiple sectors, industries, and frontier tech.
Nima Wedlake
Principal of Thomvest Ventures
Nima focuses on the advertising technology sector at Thomvest, supporting portfolio companies and evaluating new investment opportunities. His background is in management consulting, advising both startups and large enterprises on issues related to sales and go-to-market strategy, product-market fit, and sales forecasting. Prior to joining Thomvest, Nima was an associate consultant at ZS Associates, assisting a wide range of clients in the high tech and biotech industries. Nima is originally from the Bay Area and graduated from UC Berkeley with a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration.
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About Thomvest Ventures: Thomvest Ventures provides companies with cross-stage venture capital fund.
Ashish Kakran
Principal of Thomvest Ventures
Ashish Kakran is a Principal at Thomvest Ventures.
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About Thomvest Ventures: Thomvest Ventures provides companies with cross-stage venture capital fund.
Richard McElroy
Principal Cyber Security Strategist of Carbon Black
Rick McElroy, Security Strategist for Carbon Black, has over 17 years of information security experience educating and advising organisations on reducing their risk posture and tackling tough security challenges. He has held security positions in several industries, including retail, insurance, entertainment, cloud-computing, and higher education. McElroy’s experience ranges from performing penetration testing to building and leading security programs, as well as physical security and counter-terrorism services. He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional, a Certified Information Security Manager, and Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control.
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About Carbon Black: Carbon Black provides a cloud native endpoint and a workload protection platform that allows customers to prevent cyber attacks.
Richard McElroy
Principal Cyber Security Strategist of Carbon Black
Rick McElroy, Security Strategist for Carbon Black, has over 17 years of information security experience educating and advising organisations on reducing their risk posture and tackling tough security challenges. He has held security positions in several industries, including retail, insurance, entertainment, cloud-computing, and higher education. McElroy’s experience ranges from performing penetration testing to building and leading security programs, as well as physical security and counter-terrorism services. He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional, a Certified Information Security Manager, and Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control.
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About Carbon Black: Carbon Black provides a cloud native endpoint and a workload protection platform that allows customers to prevent cyber attacks.
Steve Miller
Principal Applied Security Researcher of FireEye
Steve Miller is an incident response professional and principal researcher for FireEye. Steve is experienced in the broader security and IT industries in areas such as computer forensics, communications signals analysis and intelligence program management. Steve joined Mandiant in early 2013 as a threat analyst and continues his work in FireEye in studying adversary methodologies, aiding incident response activities, and generally finding evil. Prior to joining Mandiant, Steve conducted research and special projects for federal government agencies like the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of State. His work in these organizations included the development of new ways to perform tailored evidence collection for use in law enforcement investigations. Steve’s other research includes the design and management of security emergency exercises including a simulated international manhunt called the TAG Challenge, the results of which are now published in the Public Library of Science. Steve began his career in security working with the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command at the National Security Agency. In this role, Steve conducted signals intelligence operations in direct support of U.S. counterterrorism operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Steve holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer and Digital Forensics from Champlain College in Vermont. In his spare time, he likes to ride his totally rad BMW F800GS motorcycle.
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About FireEye: FireEye is an intelligence-led security company that protects customers using innovative technology and expertise from the front lines.
Conor Clifford
Investment Principal of Future Energy Ventures
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About Future Energy Ventures: Future Energy Ventures is a Venture capital and collaboration platform that brings together corporate partners and start-ups.
Daniel Michaud-Soucy
Principal Threat Analyst of Dragos
Daniel Michaud-Soucy is a Senior Threat Hunter, Threat Operations Center at the industrial cyber security company Dragos, Inc. where he provides threat hunting and assessment services within a variety of industrial environments. Daniel previously worked for Sempra Energy on RD&D tasks revolving around machine to machine automated threat response, data aggregation, advanced threat detection and secure system interfaces for ICS/SCADA. Daniel also worked with Red Tiger Security performing cyber vulnerability assessments and penetration tests on oil & gas, electrical power, water treatment and pharmaceutical ICS/SCADA environments. Daniel also co-authored and co-taught the Red Tiger Security “SCADA Security Advanced Training” class between 2010 and 2015 training hundreds of professionals around the world.
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About Dragos: Dragos is an industrial cybersecurity company that detects and responds to threats in industrial controls systems.
Elad Shapira
Head of Research and Principal Researcher & Architect, CISO of Panorays
Elad brings to Panorays extensive cybersecurity knowledge across all levels, from reversing and low-level hacking to Web applications and social engineering. At Panorays, Elad and his team are responsible for mimicking hacker behavior by researching new attack techniques and vectors in order to automatically test the security posture of companies en masse. Elad is a recognized speaker, having presented at various hacking conferences such BlueHat IL, ReCon and Defcon meetups. Prior to Panorays, Elad was the Mobile Security Research Team Leader at AVG technologies.
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About Panorays: Panorays provides management software that automates the third-party security process, allowing it to be scaled and accelerated.
Matt Lucido
Principal of Wavemaker Partners
Matt Lucido is a 3-time entrepreneur and now leads our Wavemaker Labs team in Los Angeles. His operating experience has translated itself perfectly into the rapid prototyping conducted by Wavemaker Labs. Prior to Wavemaker Matt founded Hostwise a venture-funded B2B maid scheduling and routing software for rental managers. Prior to Hostwise Matt founded RentJolt.com a tech-enabled short-term rental management in Los Angeles CA, Washington DC, and Austin TX. He continues to own the business, but has outsourced management and no longer has an active role. Prior to RentJolt.com Matt founded Porter (2013 – 2014) a venture-funded on-demand home services smartphone app. Prior to his days as a founder Matt worked on strategic planning and analysis at The Honest Company. Prior to that, He was Director of Business Development at The BRANDIX Group (2009 – 2011).
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About Wavemaker Partners: Wavemaker is a crossborder early-stage VC firm that focuses on early-stage tech startup opportunities.
Michael Mizrahi
Principal of Wavemaker Partners
Michael Mizrahi is the Principal at Wavemaker Partners.
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About Wavemaker Partners: Wavemaker is a crossborder early-stage VC firm that focuses on early-stage tech startup opportunities.
Preetam Jinka
Principal Engineer of ShiftLeft
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About ShiftLeft: ShiftLeft delivers a new model for protecting cloud or data center hosted software.
Rob Ragan
Principal Security Researcher of Bishop Fox
Principal Security Researcher at Bishop Fox.
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About Bishop Fox: The leader in offensive security, providing continuous pen testing, red teaming, attack surface management, & security assessments.
Joe DeMesy
Principal Security Consultant of Bishop Fox
Principal Security Consultant at Bishop Fox.
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About Bishop Fox: The leader in offensive security, providing continuous pen testing, red teaming, attack surface management, & security assessments.
Shyam Manwani
Principal of S & L International
Shyam Manwani is the principal of the information technology consulting department at S & L International.
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About S & L International: S & L International is an information technology company that helps organizations maximize profitability and achieve their business goals.
Scott Ford
Principal Architect of Lacework
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About Lacework: Lacework is a cloud security services provider that automates cloud security at scale so customers can innovate with speed and safety.
Gerald Doussot
Principal Security Consultant of NCC Group
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About NCC Group: NCC Group exists to make the world safer and more secure.
Daniel Regalado
Principal Security Researcher of ZingBox
Daniel Regalado is a Principal Security Researcher with ZingBox (IoT security company) and former FireEye and Symantec Reverse Engineer. Regalado is the Lead Author of the famous Gray Hat Hacking, 4th Edition, and known in the security world as the “ATM guy” responsible for the latest discoveries of these type of threats worldwide.
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About ZingBox: ZingBox specializes in providing security for internet of things infrastructure.
Casey Davenport
Principal Software Engineer of Tigera
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About Calico, Tigera: Active, zero-trust based security for cloud-native applications
Eric Escobar
Principal Consultant of SecureWorks
Eric Escobar is a seasoned pentester and a Security Principal Consultant at Secureworks. On a daily basis he attempts to compromise large enterprise networks to test their physical, human, network and wireless security. He has successfully compromised companies from all sectors of business including: Healthcare, Pharmaceutical, Banking, Finance, Technology, Insurance, Retail, Food Distribution, Government, Education, Transportation, Energy and Industrial Manufacturing. Before entering the cyber security arena, Eric attained both a BS and MS in Civil Engineering along with his Professional Engineering license. His team consecutively won first place at DEF CON 23, 24, and 25’s Wireless CTF, snagging a black badge along the way.
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About SecureWorks: SecureWorks is a security service provider offering network, IT and managed security solutions.
Araceli Treu Gomes
Principal Subject Matter Expert – Cybersecurity and Intelligence of SecureWorks
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About SecureWorks: SecureWorks is a security service provider offering network, IT and managed security solutions.
Araceli Treu Gomes
Principal Subject Matter Expert – Cybersecurity and Intelligence of SecureWorks
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About SecureWorks: SecureWorks is a security service provider offering network, IT and managed security solutions.
Kevin Watkins
Principal Security Researcher of Symantec
Kevin Watkins is the Principal Security Researcher at Symantec.
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About Appthority, Symantec: Symantec is a security software suite consisting of anti-malware, anti-intrusion, and firewall features for server and desktop computers.
Skip Hovsmith
Principal Engineer and VP Americas of CriticalBlue
Skip Hovsmith is a Principal Engineer and VP Americas for CriticalBlue, working on securing API usage between mobile apps and backend services. Previously, Skip consulted with CriticalBlue customers on accelerating mobile and embedded software running on multicore and custom coprocessor platforms in video, networking, and security modules. Prior to CriticalBlue, Skip worked in formal verification, FPGA design, reconfigurable hw/sw systems, and VLSI and mixed-signal chip design. He enjoys working directly with customers and is a writer at Hacker Noon, focused on API security topics such as “They reverse engineered 16k apps; here’s what we’d fix”, and “Mobile API Security”.He is a frequent speaker at mobile, API, and security conferences.
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About CriticalBlue: CriticalBlue is an established company with a strong track record in providing solutions across multiple sectors of the technology industry.
Troy Molsberry
Principal Engineer & Senior Architect of MixMode
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About MixMode: MixMode is a purpose built platform to detect threats and anomalies across any data Stream with the worlds most powerful cyber AI
