John Kindervag, one of the world’s leading cybersecurity experts and creator of the Zero Trust Model of cybersecurity, has joined Illumio, a Zero Trust Segmentation company, as Chief Evangelist. With over 25 years in both practice and industry analysis, Kindervag is expected to drive the adoption of Zero Trust Segmentation (ZTS) through his high-touch advocacy and forward-thinking thought leadership.

Previously, Kindervag served as field CTO at Palo Alto Networks and spent over eight years as Vice President and Principal Analyst on the security and risk team at Forrester Research. Within his new role at Illumio, Kindervag has been tasked with the mission of broadening the application of ZTS with an ultimate aim to protect organisations by bringing microsegmentation to every Zero Trust deployment.

In a statement, Kindervag shared his vision and enthusiasm for his new role, “I am on a mission to drive adoption of Zero Trust to stop breaches from spreading into disasters. Illumio is uniquely positioned to further that mission with its pioneering Zero Trust Segmentation platform, which is an essential piece of any security strategy. I've been fortunate to have an impactful career in security, but I believe Zero Trust Segmentation and Illumio will represent my most important chapter.”

Kindervag’s Zero Trust approach to cybersecurity is based on the principle of “never trust, always verify”. It operates on the assumption that security breaches are inevitable and threats can originate from anywhere, including inside the network. Such intellectual leadership offers an innovative lens for his new role at Illumio, especially considering his experience in leading cybersecurity strategy as a senior vice president at MSSP ON2IT. Furthermore, Kindervag’s advisory work with organisations like the Cloud Security Alliance and Venture Capital firm NightDragon, positions him to effectively drive Illumio's mission.

Gautam Mehandru, CMO of Illumio, expressed excitement for Kindervag becoming a member of the team: “The need to adopt Zero Trust Segmentation has never been more urgent. Bad actors are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and attacks continue to evade detection and prevention tactics, which is why security teams are focusing on building cyber resilience to stop inevitable breaches from turning into catastrophic outcomes. As the creator of Zero Trust, John understands the foundational role that ZTS plays better than anyone. We are proud to work with him to accelerate how quickly organisations can adopt a full Zero Trust architecture and to drive rapid growth of ZTS around the world.”

Illumio remains a beacon in the cybersecurity industry by stopping breaches and ransomware from spreading across the hybrid attack surface. Their ZTS Platform visualises all traffic flows between workloads, devices, and the internet, which auto-sets granular segmentation policies to control communications, proactively or responsively isolating high-value assets and compromised systems. Their success scales across organisations of all sizes, from Fortune 100 to small businesses, protecting against breaches and ransomware within minutes, and saving millions of dollars in application downtime. Kindervag's extensive experience and novel approach will undoubtedly contribute to the company's continued growth and effectiveness.