Okta, the Silicon Valley firm behind one of the year’s top tech IPOs, has named a new chief security officer.
The maker of identity management software has appointed Yassir Abousselham, a former executive at Google (GOOG) and chief information security officer at financial tech startup SoFi, as head of security. Abousselham began in the role on June 5th.
Among other responsibilities at Google, Abousselham looked after the security of payment products such as Google Wallet and Android Pay. Most recently, he served at SoFi for about a year before deciding to take up the post at Okta.
“I was in the midst of doing a trial of Okta services and I was really impressed by quality of product,” Abousselham told Coins2Day on a call.
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David Baker, Okta’s former chief security officer, left the company at the beginning of the year. In February, he joined Bugcrowd, a startup that helps manage bug bounty programs, as vice president of operations. (For more on bug bounties, read this feature in the July issue of Coins2Day.)
Since going public in April, Okta has attained a market capitalization of $2 billion, a little less than double its pre-IPO private valuation of $1.2 billion. Notably, Okta was the first investment of the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
The company counts big tech firms such as Adobe (ADBE), Groupon (GRPN), and Box (BOZZ) among its customers. Rivals of Okta include OneLogin and Ping Identity.
“We needed an experienced security executive with a successful track record of building security teams, driving secure product development, managing technology risk and achieving regulatory compliance,” said Todd McKinnon, Okta’s CEO and cofounder, in a statement. “Yassir fits that bill exactly.”