Industrial cybersecurity firm Dragos has hired Steve Applegate, former VP and Deputy CISO at PepsiCo, as Chief Information Security Officer (CISO).
The cybersecurity veteran took to LinkedIn this week to share the news. “I’m very excited to announce that I’ve joined the Dragos team! I’ve been watching this exciting company for many years, as well as benefiting from their cybersecurity expertise and all their contributions to the industry,” he wrote. “And just this week I joined them in their mission to safeguard civilization.”
After serving in the U.S. Air Force for more than ten years as a computer scientist, Applegate moved to the private sector and has served in senior cybersecurity roles at industrial firms including Marathon Petroleum, Saudi Aramco and Boeing, and has served as a cyber threat and vulnerability program manager at North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC).
News of Applegate’s hire comes on the heels of a massive $110 million Series C funding round announced by Dragos in December 2020, which brought the total raised by the company to $158 million.
“Steve is a great addition to our team as he is mission driven, which aligns with our focus at Dragos,” Robert M. Lee, CEO and Co-Founder of Dragos, told SecurityWeek. “From his start in the Air Force to his time spent in Aviation, Electric, Oil and Gas, and Manufacturing companies serving in various security leadership roles, he’s consistently shown his passion and expertise on the topic of security and our industrial community. He will not only continue the work we’ve done on our internal security but also be customer facing to help us continue to partner with our community across the breadth of their OT/ICS cybersecurity journey.”
Dragos was founded in May 2016 by former members of the U.S. intelligence community who worked on identifying, analyzing and responding to ICS-focused cyberattacks coming from nation-state attackers.
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