Ben Verghese promoted to CTO at Zero Trust Segmentation firm, Illumio

Ben Verghese, has been promoted to the position of Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Illumio, the Zero Trust Segmentation firm. With nearly three decades of hands-on experience overseeing engineering and architecture teams in both security and cloud sectors, Verghese's new promotion comes amidst exponential growth in the Zero Trust Segmentation market.

Before attaining the CTO's mantle, Verghese had proved his mettle at Illumio, holding positions such as Chief Architect, SVP, and VP of Engineering over the span of nearly a decade. Adding to his impressive portfolio is his previous role as VP of Engineering and Chief Management Architect at VMware.

As the newly appointed CTO at Illumio, Verghese will drive and oversee the technology innovation and security strategies at the company, reporting to Andrew Rubin, CEO and co-founder. Rubin expressed his confidence in Verghese by mentioning, "Having spent the last decade playing an essential leadership role for Illumio's product and engineering teams, I could not think of anyone better to guide our technology and innovation strategy at this critical turning point for our organisation."

Rubin further added, "As cyberattacks become increasingly pervasive and sophisticated, the need for Zero Trust Segmentation has never been more urgent and it's an essential part of an organisation's cyber resilience strategy. Ben deeply understands our customer's challenges and will use his decade of experience here to drive and accelerate our innovation in areas such as cloud and AI."

Verghese also reflected on his time at Illumio stating, "Throughout my time at Illumio, the organisation's product vision has remained consistent: create Zero Trust Segmentation technology that prevents breaches from becoming catastrophic outcomes. As market adoption accelerates, and as Illumio expands its product portfolio, I am confident that our team will realise this vision by working closely with our customer base. I've never been more excited about the opportunity ahead, and I look forward to expanding on this product vision in my next chapter at Illumio."

The importance of Zero Trust Segmentation, defined as microsegmentation in technological terms, has seen a considerable upsurge in recent years. It is seen as an impactful and necessary strategy to reduce the attack surface and contain the impact of breaches. As the recent Gartner Market Guide for Microsegmentation suggests, 60 percent of enterprises are projected to use more than one deployment form of microsegmentation by 2026, a significant increase from less than 5 percent in 2023.