Yahoo! Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Alex Stamos said on Wednesday night that he will be leaving the iconic Internet company to take on the role of Chief Security Officer (CSO) at Facebook.
Stamos took to Twitter and Facebook to announce the move, which comes just over a year after accepting his role of VP of Information Security and CISO at Yahoo in March 2014.
Stamos, who will officially join Facebook as CSO on Monday, June 29, said the Facebook security team has demonstrated a history of innovation and a unique willingness to share those innovations with the world, and that the company would build upon that history in the years to come.
“The Internet has been an incredible force for connecting the world and giving individuals access to personal, educational and economic opportunities that are unprecedented in human history,” Stamos wrote in a post to his Facebook page. “These benefits are not without risk, and it is the responsibility of our industry to build the safest, most trustworthy products possible.”
“This is why I am joining Facebook,” he said. “There is no company in the world that is better positioned to tackle the challenges faced not only by today’s Internet users but for the remaining 2/3rds of humanity we have yet to connect.”
Stamos replaces former CSO Joe Sullivan who left the social media giant in April to take the role of CSO at Uber.
Stamos was a driving force behind TrustyCon, a rival event organized alongside the 2014 RSA Conference in protest of allegations that RSA accepted a $10 million payment from the NSA several years ago to use a weak number generating algorithm by default in its BSAFE toolkits.
Before joining Yahoo, Stamos served as CTO at Artemis. He also co-founded iSEC Partners, a security testing and consulting firm. He has been a keynote speaker at FS-ISAC and is frequently requested to present at conferences such as BlackHat, DEF CON, Microsoft Blue Hat and Infragard. He holds a BSEE from the University of California, Berkeley.