Esteemed Thought Leader and Entrepreneur to Help Accelerate Company’s Growth Strategy

Santa Clara, CA – March 20, 2023 – Axiad, a leading provider of organization-wide passwordless orchestration, today announced the addition of David Kennedy to its board of directors. With two and a half decades of cybersecurity and intelligence experience building and leading successful companies and teams, Kennedy brings strategic and operational expertise to help Axiad scale.

Kennedy is the founder and chief hacking officer of TrustedSec, a full-service information security consulting company, which conducts advanced persistent threat (APT)-level adversary simulations. He is also the co-founder and chief hacking officer of Binary Defense, a leading Managed Detection and Response (MDR) and enterprise defense provider that focuses on the early-stage detection of attackers. Founded in 2012 and 2014 respectively, both TrustedSec and Binary Defense have grown to become highly successful, global organizations.

Prior to these roles, Kennedy was the chief security officer (CSO) for Diebold Incorporated, an international Fortune 1000 company, where he was responsible for all information security, compliance, physical security, and loss prevention activities. Previously, he served in the United States Marine Corps where he worked closely with the National Security Agency (NSA) focusing on cyber warfare and forensics analysis activities.

“David has a strong track record in cybersecurity as a well-known and respected thought leader and entrepreneur, and his addition to our board will further strengthen our executive team,” said Yves Audebert, co-CEO of Axiad. “Additionally, David’s breadth of experience – from working with the NSA to large, global companies and building his own companies from the ground up – will be invaluable as we look to further grow our customer base and accelerate our growth trajectory in the coming year.”

Leveraging his expertise in the cybersecurity industry, Kennedy co-authored the book “Metasploit: The Penetration Testers Guide” and co-founded the Penetration Testing Execution Standard (PTIS), which is now the industry standard for penetration tests. He also created several popular open-source tools, including The Social-Engineer Toolkit (SET), PenTesters Framework (PTF), Artillery, and Fast-Track. In addition, Kennedy is a regular subject matter expert on many high-profile broadcast media outlets such as CNN, CNBC, Fox Business, BBC, and Bloomberg, his tools have been featured on several TV shows and movies, and he served as the technical consultant for the critically acclaimed Mr. Robot TV series.

“Axiad is making a profound difference in an area of cybersecurity – passwordless authentication – that is arguably one of the most important to prevent potentially crippling threat vectors like phishing-based attacks,” said Kennedy. “Most companies today are struggling to implement these critical capabilities due to a high level of internal IT complexity. What sets Axiad apart is its ability to tame that complexity and help customers address authentication in a holistic manner that reduces friction for end users at the same time.”

About Axiad

Axiad delivers organization-wide passwordless orchestration to secure people, machines, and interactions for enterprise and public sector organizations that must optimize their cybersecurity posture while navigating underlying IT complexity. The company’s flagship product, Axiad Cloud, is a comprehensive, secure, and integrated authentication platform that allows customers to move to a passwordless future without the friction and risk of fragmented solutions. Axiad supports the widest range of credentials in the industry including FIDO, mobile MFA, Windows Hello for Business, YubiKeys, smart cards, TPM and biometrics, and is trusted by public sector organizations and Fortune 500 companies across aerospace & defense, financial services, insurance, healthcare, oil & energy, and more.

For more information visit axiad.com and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Media Contact:

Meghan Locke, Three Rings Inc., (413) 627-5335, [email protected]