Noted Industry Veterans from Kaspersky and Symantec Join Fast Growing Malware Analysis Provider to Support Market Expansion
Bochum, Germany and Boston, MA – April 16, 2020 – VMRay, a provider of automated malware analysis and detection solutions, today announced the addition of two cybersecurity veterans to its executive ranks with the appointment of former Kaspersky Lab Managing Director, Ilijana Vavan as its new Chief Sales Officer as well as Christopher Martin who joins VMRay from Symantec as its Vice President of Customer Success. These two new hires reflect the company’s rapid growth in the market and the broad adoption of its suite of threat analysis and detection solutions, coming on the heels of a $10 million Series B round of funding that was closed in late 2019.
“Despite the scores of security tools currently available, malware and other advanced threats continue to wreak havoc on enterprise organizations as they struggle to distinguish the signal of legitimate threats from the endless stream of security alerts, which is precisely what our platform was built for,” said Carsten Willems, co-founder and CEO of VMRay. “Ilijana and Christopher are both exceptionally well qualified in their respective fields and bring a wealth of experience that will be crucial in helping us meet our aggressive business goals in 2020 and beyond.”
With 25 years of technology industry experience in sales, management and technical roles, Ilijana comes to VMRay from Kaspersky Lab where as Managing Director she led its European sales organization. As VMRay’s Chief Sales Officer, Ilijana will be responsible for building out the company’s sales and business development operations. Prior to Kaspersky, Ilijana was the Senior Sales Director at Oracle with responsibility for sales growth in Germany and Switzerland. She has also built and led high-performing sales teams at Kontron, Saba Software, Juniper Networks and also held a variety of senior leadership roles at Microsoft, including responsibility for the organization’s enterprise and partner strategy for Central & Eastern Europe.
“VMRay has established a reputation as one of the most innovative cybersecurity companies in Europe over the past several years, recognized by leading security researchers for its high-precision malware analysis reports and I am beyond thrilled to join this high-performance team,” said Ilijana Vavan, Chief Sales Officer for VMRay.
In the newly created role of Vice President of Customer Success, Christopher Martin will be responsible for overseeing all aspects of customer on-boarding, driving product engagement, and building a world-class customer service organization. Christopher brings more than two decades of cybersecurity product excellence, having spent the past 11 years in senior product management and solution architect roles at Symantec and Blue Coat Systems. He has also held senior technical positions at Computacenter, KrypNET GmbH, and Integralis GmbH.
“As someone who is passionate about network security, product management, and building customer-obsessed teams, the opportunity to lead the customer success function for one of today’s most visionary cybersecurity companies is truly a perfect fit for me and I look forward to helping our customers transform their threat detection capabilities,” said Christopher Martin, Vice President of Customer Success for VMRay.
