Former CIA CTO Gus Hunt Joins Security Veterans G. Mark Hardy, Mark McArdle on eSentire Advisory Board

CAMBRIDGE, ON--(Marketwired - Jan 23, 2014) - eSentire, the leader in active threat protection solutions and managed services, today announced that Ira (Gus) Hunt, former chief technology officer of the Central Intelligence Agency, and respected information security industry visionaries, G. Mark Hardy and Mark McArdle, have joined the eSentire Advisory Board. The newly-formed advisory board brings decades of frontline government and commercial information security industry experience, providing the eSentire executive leadership team with expert strategic guidance and counsel as the company navigates through unprecedented growth and surging demand.

"My nearly three decades of experience with the Central Intelligence Agency imprinted a strong recognition that firms must focus on their core business expertise and leave security to the experts," said Mr. Hunt, who joins the eSentire Advisory Board following a storied 28-year career at the CIA. "And eSentire's security as a service provides this expertise and continuous vigilance in a economically viable model for their clients."

eSentire's Active Threat Protection services continuously monitor and defend enterprises from advanced, never-before-seen cyber threats and non-malware based attacks. The company's Network Interceptor platform challenges legacy security approaches, combining behavior-based analytics, immediate mitigation and actionable intelligence on a 24x365 basis. eSentire's dedicated team of security experts continuously monitors customer networks to detect and block cyber attacks in real-time.

"We welcome Gus, G. Mark and Mark to the eSentire board of advisors, and look forward to their valuable guidance and counsel as we expand our North American footprint and expand overseas," said eSentire CEO J. Paul Haynes. "These prominent information security industry veterans have built stellar careers in both public and private service, and we thank them for their many contributions as they join forces with eSentire."

Summary biographies for Messrs. Hunt, Hardy and McArdle follow:

Gus Hunt currently serves as president and CEO of Hunt Technology, LLC, a consulting company focused on strategic IT planning, IT effectiveness and efficiency, cyber security, data-centric protection, and the cloud. Mr. Hunt is a recently retired federal government senior executive having served 28 years with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), most recently as the organization's Chief Technology Officer. As CTO, Mr. Hunt set the information technology strategic direction and future technology investment plan for CIA.

He was the motivating force behind CIA's decision to acquire a copy of both the Amazon cloud and IBM's Watson. As CTO, Mr. Hunt developed and implemented the CIA's process for expanding technology discovery and accelerating the adoption of new IT capabilities, enabling the CIA to keep pace with technology change in the commercial marketplace.

Prior to his role as CTO, Mr. Hunt served as the Director of Applications Services for the CIA, charged with building the information technology capabilities that enable the CIA's operational and analytic missions. He set the vision and direction for application development at the CIA by shifting to Agile Development techniques; implementing a service oriented architecture; building core and common services to include security as a service and the enterprise data layer; and implementing earned value‐management and total‐cost‐of‐ownership business processes to dramatically improve management decision effectiveness.

Mr. Hunt joined the CIA in 1985 as an analyst and subsequently served in varied analytic, operational, and technical leadership roles to include: Director of Architecture and Systems Engineering (ASE); Chair of the CIA Architecture Review Board; Chief of Research and Development for the Crime and Narcotics Center; and Deputy Chief of the Operations Support Group in the Non‐Proliferation Center. 

G. Mark Hardy is president of National Security Corporation, an information security consultancy he founded in 1988. Mr. Hardy has provided information security expertise to government, military, and commercial clients for more than 30 years. Mr. Hardy's professional background includes information security planning and policy development, managing security assessment and penetration teams, data encryption and authentication (including "breaking" commercial cryptographic algorithms), software development and strategic planning for e-commerce, and writing commercial risk assessment software. He has developed information security plans for four U.S. Military commands, and wrote the communications security encryption requirements for an experimental military satellite program.

Over the last fifteen years, Mr. Hardy has served as a principal spokesman for four information security companies: National Security Corporation, AXENT Technologies, Secure Computing Corporation, and Guardent, Inc. He is the author of the Information Security Handbook for Enterprise Computing, Client/Server Security Handbook, a contributing author to Network Security Secrets, and has provided pre-publication review for a number of security books, including Bruce Schneier's Secrets and Lies, and Winn Schwartau's Time-Based Security. Mr. Hardy has served on three ANSI committees (X9F, X9E9, and X12) writing security standards for financial and e-commerce industries. A retired U.S. Navy Captain, Mr. Hardy is an internationally recognized expert who has spoken at over 250 events world-wide. He serves on the Advisory Board of CyberWATCH, an Information Assurance/Information Security Advanced Technology Education Center of the National Science Foundation. A graduate of Northwestern University, he holds a BS in Computer Science, a BA in Mathematics, a Masters in Business Administration, a Masters in Strategic Studies, and holds CISSP, CISM, GSLC, and CISA certifications.

Mark McArdle holds six patents in Internet security and is a seasoned technology executive with over 20 years experience with top technology brands. After starting his career as a software developer, he moved to Silicon Valley in 1996 and joined PGP, Inc. PGP was acquired by McAfee in 1997 where Mr. McArdle remained for 11 years, assuming increasingly senior positions in Enterprise, SMB and Consumer Product groups. Mr. McArdle rose to the rank of senior vice president for McAfee's Consumer Product Development division, responsible for engineering and product management functions for the 400-employee division with products generating in excess of $650M in annual revenue.

In 2010, Mr. McArdle joined tinyHippos, helping create a mobile development platform emulator called Ripple that was acquired by BlackBerry (formerly Research In Motion) in March 2011. A passionate technologist, Mr. McArdle shares insights and experiences in his columns published in The Record, the Waterloo Region's daily newspaper, and Grand, the Waterloo Region's leading lifestyle magazine. He has served on the External Advisory Board to the Canadian Privacy Commissioner, and from and from 2010 - 2013, served on the board at iLookabout Inc., a TSX-listed street-level imagery technology company based in London, Ontario.

About eSentire, Inc.

eSentire^® is the leader in Active Threat Protection solutions and services, the most comprehensive way to defend enterprises from advanced and never-before-seen cyber threats. eSentire's flagship offering, Network Interceptor, challenges legacy security approaches, combining behavior-based analytics, immediate mitigation and actionable intelligence on a 24x7x365 basis. The company's dedicated team of security experts continuously monitors customer networks to detect and block cyber attacks in real-time. Protecting more than $1.3 trillion in combined assets, eSentire is the trusted choice for security decision-makers in financial services, healthcare, mining, energy, engineering and construction, legal services, and technology companies. In late 2013, eSentire was named to the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Companies to Watch and cited as a Canadian Innovation Exchange CIX Top 20 most innovative Canadian company. For more information visit www.esentire.com and follow @esentire.