Vectra announces Steve Cottrell as EMEA CTO

Steve Cottrell has been named as Vectra AI’s EMEA Chief Technology Officer. Steve will strive to develop relationships with customers and prospects, security communities, government and intelligence agencies, and others to identify critical security pain points while also assisting in the evolution of security strategies in support of digital transformation and cloud adoption.

Steve will also assist security decision-makers in convincing their teams and senior stakeholders of the advantages of AI-driven threat detection and response technologies.

“For decades, security teams have been hampered by information overload, and the task of finding the needle in the haystack using a traditional SIEM based approach has largely failed. Vectra’s technology has the potential to radically enhance capabilities for CISOs and security teams when detecting and responding to breaches. Its industry-leading data science team, coupled with truly world-class security researchers, is a real game-changer in this space,” explains Steve Cottrell, EMEA CTO for Vectra AI.

He added,  “I’m excited to champion Vectra’s ‘threat led’ approach – using AI and machine learning to provide high fidelity alerts that identify potential breaches. Ultimately, this means security teams can deliver much greater value to their businesses in terms of breach resilience.”

Steve has spent the previous 15 years as a CISO at significant corporations, bringing a wealth of knowledge to the Vectra team from critical industries such as communications, telecommunications, and insurance. Steve worked as a CISO at Fujitsu, Vodafone, Aviva, and Admiral Insurance before joining Vectra. Prior to this, he worked at Intel as a security professional.

“RansomOps, rapid digitalization, and cloud adoption continue to transform the security landscape, so organizations need a new approach. That’s why I’m particularly pleased Steve Cottrell has joined the team,” explains Willem Hendrickx, SVP International for Vectra AI.

He added, “As we ramp up our focus on large enterprise accounts next year, Steve’s insight and experience will be invaluable. He understands how combining state-of-the-art technology and talented people can drastically improve security. Steve will be our secret weapon in EMEA, helping make network and cloud and environments safer. He’ll achieve this by working with customers to bring Vectra’s unique capabilities into their workflows and processes.”

“Having spent a long time working as a CISO in large corporate environments, I understand the challenges CISOs and their teams face on an ongoing basis. I have also seen first-hand when some security products have failed to deliver value,” concludes Cottrell. “I now feel well placed to ensure that we are addressing the highest priority challenges for security teams, and crucially driving a rapid and tangible return on investment in terms of driving down risk.”