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LinkedIn Hires Former Twitter Security Chief Lea Kissner as New CISO

Lea Kissner replaces Geoff Belknap as Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at Microsoft-owned LinkedIn.

CISO

Business social networking giant LinkedIn has appointed former Twitter security chief Lea Kissner as its new Chief Information Security Officer (CISO).

LinkedIn CISO Lea Kissner
Lea Kissner Replaces Geoff Belknap as LinkedIn CISO.

Kissner, who departed Twitter after the Elon Musk acquisition, will be tasked with leading LinkedIn’s security and privacy strategy, ensuring the protection of LinkedIn’s member and customer data.

Kissner replaces Geoff Belknap, who recently moved into a separate leadership role at Microsoft, which owns LinkedIn.

Based in San Francisco, Kissner has been a prominent cybersecurity practitioner at several well known tech firms. Kissner was at Google for 12 years and left as global lead of privacy technology. After that came a move through some of the biggest firms in technology: HUMU (chief privacy officer), Zoom (security and privacy consultant), Apple (director of engineering), Twitter (starting as head of privacy engineering and becoming CISO and VP of Engineering), and then as CISO at Lacework.

Kissner shared the news on LinkedIn Wednesday. “Speaking as a heavy LinkedIn user I know that what we do here matters and I take that responsibility seriously,” Kissner posted. “ I’m an engineer (and cryptographer) by training and I believe that great security not only protects us but makes our systems work better and more robustly.”

Related: CISOs in Cloud-based Services Discuss the Process of Leadership

Related: Twitter Security Chief Resigns as Musk Sparks ‘Deep Concern’

Written By

Ryan Naraine is Editor-at-Large at SecurityWeek and host of the popular Security Conversations podcast series. He is a security community engagement expert who has built programs at major global brands, including Intel Corp., Bishop Fox and GReAT. Ryan is a founding-director of the Security Tinkerers non-profit, an advisor to early-stage entrepreneurs, and a regular speaker at security conferences around the world.

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