Reed Taussig
President and CEO
Reed Taussig has more than 30 years of experience in the computer hardware and software fields. Prior to ThreatMetrix, Mr. Taussig was president and CEO of Vormetric, Inc., a leader in data privacy and protection. Under his leadership, Vormetric established itself as a leading provider of encryption solutions for the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards industry.
Mr. Taussig also served as president and CEO of Callidus Software (NASDAQ: CALD), the leading provider of enterprise incentive compensation management application systems. As founding CEO and the fifth employee, Mr. Taussig led the growth of company to more than $70 million in revenues and over 350 employees.
Prior to Callidus Mr. Taussig was the president and CEO of inquiry.com, a pioneer in the B2B Internet space as well as senior vice president of operations for Gupta Technologies, the leader for PC client server software development tools and databases. Mr. Taussig holds a bachelor’s of arts degree in economics from the University of Arizona.
Bert Rankin
Vice President of Marketing
Bert Rankin has more than 25 years of marketing experience in high technology, with a proven ability to develop successful, innovative software solutions for enterprise and SMB businesses. Prior to joining ThreatMetrix, Mr. Rankin served as president and CEO of Shopcreator Services, Ltd., a provider of Saas-based e-commerce solutions that allow SMBs to quickly and efficiently create and manage profitable online stores. At Shopcreator Services, Mr. Rankin managed all day-to-day operational activities, leading product development and generating thousands of customers in the U.S. and U.K. through targeted marketing and telesales programs.
Mr. Rankin has substantial international expertise in product marketing, management and communications, holding the senior-level marketing role at Intacct, Inc., Callidus Software, Inc. and NetManage, Inc. He was responsible for leading teams that revamped product lines, created exciting marketing communications programs, and targeted go-to-market strategies that resulted in substantial additional revenue. Mr. Rankin earned a bachelor of arts from Harvard University and a masters of business administration from Stanford Graduate School of Business, with an emphasis in marketing and financial management.
John Kirst
Senior Vice President of Field Operations
John Kirst has more than 20 years of sales and marketing experience with a proven track record of leadership in emerging, venture funded, high technology companies.
Prior to joining ThreatMetrix, Mr. Kirst was senior vice president of sales for West Interactive Corporation, a leading global provider of customer contact transformation services and solutions targeting the Fortune 2000.
He held the positions of vice president of business development and senior vice president of global sales and business development at TuVox, Inc., a SaaS provider of speech automation application software and services. TuVox was later acquired by West Interactive Corporation’s parent company, West Corporation.
Prior to TuVox, Mr. Kirst was a co-founder of Edify, a global provider of enterprise web and voice portal platform software and applications. He joined Edify as director of marketing and business development and held subsequent roles as director of worldwide channel and OEM sales, vice president of Asia Pacific/Latin America sales and operations and senior vice president of worldwide marketing.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Kirst was a financial planning manager and product manager at Rolm Corporation, a $1 billion provider of telecommunications hardware and software.
Mr. Kirst holds a bachelor of economics from Stanford University and a master of business administration from Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business.
Bruce Scott
Vice President of Worldwide Engineering
Bruce Scott has more than 30 years of experience in the computer engineering field. Prior to ThreatMetrix, he was vice president of engineering of ParAccel, a provider of enterprise data warehousing solutions, where he implemented Agile and Scrum processes and other engineering best practices such as continuous integration and test-driven development.
Mr. Scott has also served as vice president of engineering and technical support of SenSage, a leading provider of enterprise security analytics. Under his leadership, he contributed to the development of strategic partnerships with leading companies, and streamlined the engineering process to produce more efficiently.
Prior to SenSage Mr. Scott was the founder, president, and CEO of PointBase Inc., a leading provider of Java-based application embedded database servers and enterprise mobility and synchronization technology where he generated $37.5 million in venture funding over three years. He has also held past positions at Gupta and Oracle. Mr. Scott holds a bachelor’s of science degree in computer science from California Polytechnic State University.
Alisdair Faulkner
Chief Products Officer
Alisdair Faulkner is a technology entrepreneur who has over a decade of experience building products and delivering mission critical technologies that are run by the world’s most trusted brands.
Mr. Faulkner is a noted industry expert in issues relating to online fraud, device identification, cybercrime, identity theft, information security and networking technology. He is a frequent industry speaker appearing before such industry forums as the Anti-Phishing Working Group, CyberSource Payment Summit and Experian Vision Conference. He has appeared on BBC online news commenting on cybercrime and is a past winner of the DEMOgod award for technology innovation and is a frequent contributor to the ThreatMetrix blog, “Frauds & Ends.”
As chief products officer at ThreatMetrix, he is responsible for product management and strategic accounts. Prior to ThreatMetrix, Mr. Faulkner was a founder and business development director of NetPriva, a leading network performance software provider, acquired by Expand Networks.
Mr. Faulkner came to NetPriva with the acquisition of the assets and IP of Foursticks where he was a co-founder and responsible for product management. Earlier in his career, he was a senior consultant at Accenture.
He holds a master’s of engineering degree in information technology and telecommunications from Adelaide University, a graduate diploma in applied finance from the Securities Institute Australia, and is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) directors course.
Frank Teruel
Chief Financial Officer
Frank Teruel is an experienced executive with significant domain knowledge in sales, finance, and operations. As chief operating officer at Lightpost Holdings, a global publishing, licensing, and media company, Mr. Teruel held global profit and loss responsibility and directed all group operating activities.
Prior to joining Lightpost, Mr. Teruel served as chief financial officer and vice president of worldwide services and support for Vormetric, an enterprise data security and encryption company. Prior to joining Vormetric, he served as vice president of finance at Emagia Corporation, an enterprise software company focused on working capital optimization solutions. Prior to Emagia, he served as vice president of finance and chief financial officer at TelePost, Inc., an international provider of conferencing and collaborative solutions. Mr. Teruel has also served as managing director of Montgomery Financial Management where he was responsible for all aspects of the northern and southern California practices. He also brings experience from SyQuest, Inc (NASDAQ: SYQTQ) where he held senior financial and sales management positions and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Mr. Teruel is an adjunct professor at Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business and is a faculty member in the Business and Computer Information Systems department at De Anza College. He previously served as chairman of the Data Security Chapter of the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals, been an industry keynote speaker, contributed articles on data security, and served on a number of company and non-profit boards. He previously served as the president of the Thomas Kinkade Foundation and is the founder of Aqua Munda, an organization dedicated to clean water solutions for the developing world.
Mr. Teruel holds a masters of business administration from Liberty University, a bachelor of arts degree in business administration and is a CPA.
Sam Hageman
Vice President of Finance
Sam Hageman has over 20 years experience in senior accounting, finance and general management positions. At ThreatMetrix, Mr. Hageman is responsible for ensuring strong financial controls and accounting best practices.
Prior to joining ThreatMetrix, he worked as corporate controller at Adomo, Inc., (sold to Avaya, Inc.) where he managed the company’s accounting, finance, human resources, facility, risk management and treasury activities. He has also held financial and consulting positions with Robert Half Management Resources, Enkata Technologies, SeeCommerce (sold to Teradata), Emotion (sold to Kodak Ventures) and was a manager, information and communications practice, with KPMG.
Mr. Hageman holds a bachelor’s in business administration degree from San Jose State.
Lance Jacobs
Vice President of Sales
Lance Jacobs has over 15 years in management, business development, sales and marketing in the software industry. At ThreatMetrix, Mr. Jacobs is responsible for accelerating the adoption of ThreatMetrix solutions by financial services companies.
Prior to ThreatMetrix, he was director of North American business development at F-Secure, a publicly held IT security and anti-virus software provider, where he built relationships with service providers such as Cox, Charter Communications, CenturyLink, Shaw Communications, Dish Network, DirecTV, WildBlue, and others. Earlier in his career, he was director of business development at Verifia (since acquired by Quova), a pioneer in Internet IP geolocation technology.
Mr. Jacobs is a graduate of Utah State University.
Phil Steffora
Vice President of Global Networks and Chief Security Officer
Phil Steffora has more than 20 years experience in building, scaling and maintaining high availability Internet infrastructures with high volume transactional requirements. Prior to joining ThreatMetrix Mr. Steffora was the CIO and vice president of technical operations at Collarity, a leader in integrated on-site behavioral segment targeting for web publishers.
Previous to Collarity, he served as vice president of technical operations for Vendio Services, Inc., a multi-channel e-commerce company that provided a one-stop solution for small businesses that sold online across multiple channels. Vendio Services, Inc. was later acquired by Alibaba.com, the world’s leading e-commerce company for small business.
Mr. Steffora has also held executive roles as vice president of technical operations for Mailblocks, which was later sold to America Online; vice president of global datacenter operations for Metromedia Fiber Network, Inc.; and senior director of technical operations for Alta Vista, Inc.
Andreas Baumhof
Chief Technology Officer
Andreas Baumhof is an internationally renowned cybersecurity thought leader and expert with deep experience in the encryption, PKI, malware and phishing markets.
Prior to ThreatMetrix, Mr. Baumhof was an executive director, CEO and co-founder of Australian-based TrustDefender, a leading provider of security and fraud detection technologies. Mr. Baumhof previously served as co-founder and chief technology officer of Microdasys Inc., a leading provider of deep content security solutions. While there, he developed the first SSL proxy and has patents pending in Europe and the U.S.
Mr. Baumhof holds a degree in mathematics and computer science from the University of Munich, Germany.
David Jones
Technical Advisor
David Jones has more than 15 years experience in technical and management roles in the software industry. Prior to co-founding ThreatMetrix in 2005, Mr. Jones founded SpamMATTERS, delivering products used by federal government law enforcement agencies for tracking phishing and spamming operations.
Mr. Jones joined SurfControl when EmU Tech, another company he founded, was acquired by SurfControl in 2001. At SurfControl, he was vice president of global research, a leading Internet content filtering company that was acquired by Websense, Inc. (NASDAQ: WBSN). Among his major accomplishments at SurfControl was the management of the email filtering and flagship anti-spam solutions generating over 30% of company revenues.
Mr. Jones holds a bachelor’s of engineering in electrical engineering degree from the University of Technology, Sydney.
