Sophos Appoints New CEO As Longtime Leader Steps Down
Kris Hagerman steps into Steve Munford’s boots at Sophos
UK-based security company Sophos has announced a new CEO to replace Steve Munford, who is stepping down after six years at the helm
Munford is to be succeeded by Kris Hagerman (pictured below), previously of Symantec and Veritas, and CEO of graphics processing vendor Corel Software. Sophos gave no reason for Munford’s departure, other than to say he was returning with his family to his native Canada.
Munford (below) will stay on at Sophos as a non-executive chairman of the board. He said he would be “working closely with Kris and the board as we continue to build on Sophos’ global success”.
Sayonara Steve
“Steve has been an outstanding leader for Sophos,” said Peter Gyenes, chairman of Sophos’ board of directors. “Under Steve’s leadership, the company has delivered strong revenue growth, built a comprehensive product portfolio, and successfully entered a number of high-growth market segments, including unified threat management (UTM), mobile device management (MDM) and cloud encryption.
“Kris brings strong execution and strategy skills, a proven ability to lead top performing teams, and a successful track record of scaling billion-dollar software organisations.”
Hagerman was unavailable for comment at the time of publication, but did issue this statement: “Sophos has a winning strategy, a highly talented team, and world-class products that provide an exciting opportunity to expand our share of the growing IT security industry.
“I look forward to working with the Sophos team to deliver compelling value to our customers and partners and to continue the company’s momentum and success.”
Earlier this year, TechWeekEurope learned Sophos was planning on releasing a cloud version for each of its products. That could happen as early as 2015 and forms part of a strategy push devised by Sophos CTO Gerhard Eschelbeck, who only joined the company in 2011.
Rival Symantec recently kicked its CEO Enrique Salem out, after he served a total of 19 years for the firm.
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