Cybersecurity firm White Ops has appointed co-founder Tamer Hassan as CEO. Hassan will assume leadership of the company and will join the Board of Directors of White Ops immediately.
Hassan succeeds Sandeep Swadia, who stepped down as CEO after two years in the role. Concurrent with the CEO succession, Gene Fay, White Ops General Manager, will assume the role of Chief Operating Officer, reporting to Hassan.
“We’ve chosen a fearless leader at a time when White Ops is in a stage of hyper-growth,” said White Ops Co-Founder and President, Michael Tiffany. “As cybercrime becomes more pervasive throughout the digital ecosystem, our ability to innovate and protect our customers has never been more important. I’m excited to see Tamer move the company forward with the speed required to capitalize on the opportunities in front of us.”
Hassan, who has served as Chief Technology Officer since co-founding White Ops in 2012, has successfully scaled White Ops technology to support many of the Internet’s largest platforms while aggressively pursuing the most sophisticated and malicious bot threats. He is credited with being the lynchpin of the global consortium including the FBI and Google that took down 3ve in November 2018, the largest private sector collaboration in FBI history.
Prior to White Ops, Hassan was the founder and CEO of Compel Data Technologies Inc., a software development and consulting company. He also served as a Major in the U.S. Air Force where he was a decorated officer who completed multiple combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan as a Combat Search and Rescue helicopter pilot.
“I’m honored and grateful for the opportunity to lead this exceptional organization of dedicated and talented professionals,” said Hassan. “We continue to be passionate about our mission of securing the Internet from the malicious bot activity that causes millions of dollars of damage to enterprises and their customers each day. I look forward to expanding into new markets and continuing our strong customer and revenue growth in 2019 and beyond.”
Gene Fay brings 20 years of leadership experience to his new role of Chief Operating Officer. Fay previously served as General Manager of IBM Resilient, which he joined as VP of Sales and Technical Services in 2013. Before IBM, Gene founded FVF Partners, helping CEOs and senior executives at early-stage high-tech companies to build and execute upon their growth strategies.
He has served as president of Nine Technology, an online backup and recovery developer, as well as VP of worldwide sales and global alliances for the security information and event management business unit of RSA.
“White Ops is experiencing accelerated growth with the success of significant new product capabilities, and the unprecedented industry collaboration that took down 3ve,” said Fay. “It is a tremendous honor to lead this team, and I am excited and eager to help further the company’s success.”
