Garrison, the specialist provider of ultra-secure web browsing technology, today announced the hiring of cybersecurity veteran Colin McKinty, PhD as General Manager of North America. As GM, McKinty will oversee the development of Garrison’s North American operations. He will report to David Garfield, co-founder and CEO of Garrison.
McKinty joins Garrison after spending over 17 years at BAE Systems. Most recently, McKinty served as VP of Cyber Security Strategy at BAE Systems and as such was one of the principal driving forces behind the organization breaking into the Enterprise security market in the Americas. Across multiple roles within the organization, McKinty spent nearly two decades working with federal and commercial organizations helping them to reduce business risk while enhancing security/business operations.
“Garrison is in the perfect position to capitalize on the US market, and I’m excited by the opportunity to lead that effort,” said McKinty. “After being at BAE Systems for my entire career, it was going to take an incredible opportunity for me to leave – the comradery, innovation and vision at Garrison, as well as the way they approach cybersecurity was a big factor for me in joining.”
As the risks associated with cybersecurity within the enterprise continue to rise – expedited by the rise of IoT, AI and 5G – those within the C suite have taken on a greater role when it comes to making decisions in regards to security. According to Deloitte, 62 percent of CEOs cite cybersecurity and technology acquisitions as top priorities. Garrison’s unique technology enables users to access all content on the web without any risk of exposing their organization to cyber-attack, using a revolutionary technique to place a hardware enforced gap at the most fundamental electronic level between the internet and the end-user’s device in order to prevent malicious web content from ever coming into contact with the user or their organization’s IT systems.
“Colin’s experience speaks for itself. What he was able to achieve in the US market with BAE Systems is something we look forward to him replicating with Garrison,” said David Garfield, Garrison co-founder & CEO. “We are excited to have him leading our North American operations as we continue to expand our presence in that market.”
In the past 12 months, Garrison has more than doubled its staff to nearly 70 employees, appointed Tudor Brown, former president of ARM to the Board and expanded its operations to the US. Today its patented Garrison SAVI®hardware technology is used by employees within global blue-chip organizations across the banking, insurance, media, telecoms and legal sectors, as well as by the UK Government.
The company also raised $30m in additional funds from London-based investors in October of 2018. The round was led by Dawn Capital, investors in London-based Mimecast, the NASDAQ-listed email security company that is today valued at $2.1bn, and brings the total raised by Garrison to more than $50m at prevailing exchange rates, all from London-based investors.