AppOmni appoints Joel Wallenstrom as new General Manager

AppOmni has announced the appointment of Joel Wallenstrom as its new General Manager. Wallenstrom, an industry veteran, will oversee a unified function that integrates Product, Engineering, and Customer Success disciplines to advance AppOmni's standing in the domain of business-critical Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) security. The company aims to benefit from its leading SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) and threat detection capabilities under his leadership.

Brendan O'Connor, CEO and co-founder of AppOmni, expressed enthusiasm about Wallenstrom joining the team. "This appointment represents a new level of scale and innovation for AppOmni—the excellence of our technology professionals in diverse disciplines can now be harnessed for greater collaboration than ever before. We welcome Joel to our management team, and we look forward to building on our market momentum together," said O'Connor.

Wallenstrom brings a wealth of experience in cybersecurity to his new role. He previously served as CEO of Wickr, a secure communications provider that was acquired by Amazon Web Services (AWS). During his tenure at Wickr, he led the transformation of the company's offering from a consumer messaging app to an end-to-end encrypted collaboration platform used by Fortune 100 companies and critical commands across the Five Eyes and NATO allies.

In a past role, Wallenstrom was President and CEO of iSEC Partners, a professional services firm known for its advanced security research and incident response work in high-profile cases. iSEC Partners was acquired by NCC Group in 2010, and Wallenstrom subsequently served as General Manager of NCC Group's North America operations. During this period, he oversaw the acquisition of several security firms, including Matasano, Intrepidus, FOX-IT, and VSR. Wallenstrom began his tech security career in 1999 as Director for Strategic Alliances at @stake, one of the first information security providers.

Wallenstrom highlighted the importance of prioritising SaaS security in his comments on joining AppOmni. "Throughout my career in cybersecurity, I was often struck by the prevalence of critical vulnerabilities that came from misconfigurations; it happened in every deployment, even the sophisticated infrastructures within the Fortune 100," he remarked. "Since then, as an advisor to AppOmni, I've seen how SaaS security is prioritised by only a handful of security-savvy organisations. This is the next big battle in information security, and our adversaries well understand these attack vectors. It is absolutely vital that we get in front of this issue now, and I'm proud to join a team that is leading the way in doing just that."

Wallenstrom's extensive experience in cybersecurity and his track record of transforming security-focused companies are expected to bring significant value to AppOmni. His appointment coincides with the company's efforts to enhance its offerings in SaaS security solutions, providing a comprehensive approach to addressing the emerging challenges in the industry.