We are Black Kite.

Paul Paget is the Chief Executive Officer of Black Kite.

Shortly after joining in 2019, Paul became the CEO of Black Kite, driving the growth strategy of the company and brand from its early stage into the number one recommended company in the security ratings space. Prior to Black Kite, Paul was Chief Executive Officer of PwnieExpress where he transformed the company into the world’s first SaaS IoT threat detection player. Other past positions include being the Chief Executive Officer of Savant Protection (now part of Digital Guardian/ Fortra) and Core Security Technologies (also part of Fortra). Paul has also served in executive leadership roles with Baltimore Technologies, GTE Cybertrust (now Verizon). Paul holds a B.A. from Bowdoin College.

Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at Black Kite, Candan Bolukbas is responsible for the technical direction and innovation of Black Kite products. Candan is a digital polymath and certified ethical hacker who fully appreciates the growing threat to digital communications and data accumulation that affect us all. Besides being a certified ethical hacker, he is a certified secure programmer, certified incident handler, and a certified computer hacking forensic investigator.

Candan has a BS degree in Computer Engineering and has vast experience developing security products, performing penetration testing and forensic analysis, and providing cybersecurity training. His certifications include CCNA, CCNP, CHFI, ECSP, MCSA, ECIH, CEH, and LPT. Candan has worked in both the public and private sectors for many years and is a strong supporter of human rights, freedom, and privacy.

Chris is a dedicated professional with more than 20 years of experience delivering and leading cybersecurity teams, technology, and business teams in fast-paced, high risk, and highly complex environments. Throughout his career, Chris moved between business, customer, and technical strategy-focused positions. Together these orientations allow him to see management and operational issues from various perspectives.

Chris started at Black Kite as Chief Customer Officer, building the foundation of our customer success organization. Prior to Black Kite, he held the position of CISO at ObserveIT, where he led their cybersecurity and compliance programs until their acquisition by ProofPoint in 2019. In other experiences, Chris built, and managed Cybereason’s Security Service and was Head of Security at Novartis Pharmaceuticals where he managed both operational and information security teams.

Bob has been involved in security for most of his career, initially in physical security as a law enforcement officer. In those years Bob acquired a broad range of expertise and experience in all areas of security, including third-party security, risk assessment, architecture, design, policy development, deployment, incident response and investigation and enterprise solution deployments in areas including intrusion detection, data protection, compliance, and incident reporting and response.

Most recently, he was the Head of PayPal’s Global Third-Party Security & Inspections team, developing the program from the ground up into a state-of-the-art risk management program.

In a previous role as Chief Information Security Officer for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, he led the Pennsylvania Information Security Architecture program to win the 2007 award for outstanding achievement in information technology by the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO).

Bob has been named a CSO of the Year finalist for the SC Magazine Awards and was nominated as the Information Security Executive of the Year, North America. Additionally, his team was a finalist in the SC Magazine Awards for Best Security Team.

Bob’s certifications include CRISC, CTPRP and OpenFAIR.

As Chief Revenue Officer, Eireann brings more than 20 years of sales and marketing experience. He has a track record of building high-performing sales teams focused on creating revenue growth and exceeding customer expectations.

Prior to becoming CRO at Black Kite, Eireann spent 15 years in various roles at RSA, EMC, and Dell. He most recently served as Vice President of Sales at NetWitness, where he was responsible for their business in the Americas.

Prior to joining EMC, Eireann spent 9 years at Brightwork establishing their US presence and driving sales and marketing in North America. After graduating from the University of Massachusetts, Eireann began his professional career in government as a legislative aide in the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

Jessica is the Chief Marketing Officer at Black Kite.

Jessica is a seasoned marketing leader in cybersecurity software, specializing in building high-performing teams and executing growth-driven go-to-market strategies. Prior to joining Black Kite, she led marketing at Cado Security, MineOS, and Hysolate. With a strong foundation in product marketing from Cybereason, CyberArk, and RSA, Jessica excels in brand positioning, messaging, and competitive analysis. A proud Buckeye, she holds a BSBA from The Ohio State University and an MBA in Marketing from Brandeis International Business School.

Chuck is always searching for a problem that a technology product can solve. Over the past 20 years, he has re-invented product portfolios ranging from legacy hardware product families to cutting edge cloud security solutions.

Prior to Black Kite, Chuck held the position of Director of Product Management for IBM Security SOAR. His work positioned security automation as a centerpiece of the IBM Security software portfolio. Other experiences include launching the Enterprise Security business at Akamai, and work as a Sales Engineer in the telecommunications industry covering Latin American and Asia. Chuck earned a BS in Computer Engineering from Northeastern University.

As the Chief Research and Intelligence Officer, Dr. Ferhat Dikbiyik and his team of data scientists and engineers provide research around cyber risk assessment, threat actors’ attack vectors, data analysis of cyber incidents, and machine-learning algorithms used in the Black Kite platform for better automation and computation.

Ferhat has 15 years of experience as a researcher in the risk-centered studies space. He received his MS and Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Davis. During his Ph.D., he worked on disaster resiliency on telecom networks and critical infrastructures and later focused on cyber risk. Ferhat was a member of and led national and international projects on disaster risk, including cyber-attacks. He built a successful career in the scientific community with more than 40 papers published in scientific journals or presented at conferences and received more than 1,000 citations for those works.

Ferhat switched his career from academia to startup businesses after holding an Assistant professor position in 2018. Since then, he has been studying the threat actors, hacker mindset, cyber risk, and cyber attacks such as ransomware.

As Vice President of Public Sector, Tony brings more than 30 years of experience in Federal Government to Black Kite ranging from career Naval Aviator, to legislative affairs liaison to Congress, to The White House. During his tenure, he had extensive experience negotiating with foreign government officials representing U.S. interests abroad, as well as private industry leaders to drive some of the nation’s most complex strategy, policy, and technology issues.

Prior to joining Black Kite, Tony was a Senior Cyber Policy Advisor, Critical and Emerging Technology, in the Office of Secretary of Defense. In that role, he was a member of several National Security Council committees, creating authorities on behalf of the Administration against foreign adversaries threatening U.S. economic and national security interests. Additionally, he coordinated international engagements with allies to design sustained global campaigns targeting state-sponsored malicious actors in order to generate insights, enable defense, and impose costs on adversaries.

A strategic thought leader with extensive expertise in cybersecurity, Jeffrey Wheatman is regarded foremost as an expert in guiding public sector clients and Fortune 500 companies in connection with their cyber risk management programs. In his current role as Cyber Risk Evangelist at Black Kite, Jeffrey works to get the message out about the business impact of third-party risk and solutions to treat those risks.

Prior to joining Black Kite, Jeffrey was a Vice President in Gartner’s Research and Advisory Group for 15 years, where he worked with clients to build and improve their security programs, assessing risk, focusing on reporting on program status, stakeholder engagement, and bridging the connection between technology and cybersecurity risk. Jeffrey has authored approximately 150 research notes read by more than 6,000 clients. For four years, Jeffrey also served as the Chair of the North America Security and Risk Management Summit, Gartner’s 2nd largest conference with 4000 attendees annually.

Earlier in his career, Jeffrey contributed as Practice Manager, Information Security for Gotham Technology Group, and as a Principal Consultant, Information Security, with ThruPoint, Inc.

As Vice President, Human Resources, Kelly leads Black Kite’s HR function. She is responsible for our talent strategy and oversees our HR operations. Kelly brings with her 15+ years of experience developing innovative talent strategies and programs for marketing, start-up and consulting companies that have global teams. She is passionate about cultivating employee-centric work environments that fuel maximum business impact and creating experiences for employees where they feel excited about and valued for their work and are energized to contribute their best.

Kelly has had diverse experience leading the HR function for companies in earlier start-up phases and served as a strategic HR business partner within larger organizations. Prior to joining Black Kite, Kelly held HR leadership roles at HYCU, SimpliSafe, Allurion Technologies, and Racepoint Global.