DC cybersecurity investor takes new role with Boston company to ‘get back on the field’

D.C.–based cybersecurity investment firm Strategic Cyber Ventures named a new CEO on Monday, as now-former leader Tom Kellerman said he is taking a job with Boston-based endpoint security firm.

With the move, cofounder Hank Thomas will move from COO to CEO of the two-year-old firm, according to a news release. Kellerman and Thomas, who have both worked on cybersecurity inside and outside government, founded the firm to back companies commercializing technologies developed within the U.S. and Israeli governments.  So far, SCV has invested in four companies, including D.C.–based memory-augmentation company Polarity.

Kellerman, in turn, is taking on the role of chief cybersecurity stragetist at Carbon Black. In a blog post, Kellerman wrote about how Carbon Black makes “game changing products” that present an “ideal cyber bodyguard.”

"Getting Back on the Field" – @TAKellermann joins @CarbonBlack_Inc as the company's Chief #Cybersecurity Strategist – https://t.co/8pmlD7Ud9p #infosec pic.twitter.com/wa747x90ma

— VMware Carbon Black (@vmw_carbonblack) January 22, 2018

But he also indicated that the move was due to the urgency of the current cyber threat to the U.S.

“While CEO of SCV, I watched the U.S. be colonized by foreign hackers,” he wrote. “Sitting on the sidelines, it became quite apparent that cyberspace is suffering a cyber insurgency. The overt colonization of American Cyberspace has continued at breathtaking speed and thus I have decided to get back on the field.”

He added that the “shifting landscape” to mobile and cloud computing present new challenges.

“The inaction of the current administration to civilize cyberspace has led to a cyber-crime wave of historic proportions,” Kellerman, who is staying on the board at SCV, wrote.