Seattle-based cybersecurity company ExtraHop has named Patrick Dennis as its new CEO.
Dennis, formerly the CEO of the Massachusetts-based customer experience software company Alvaria, is replacing former CEO Arif Kareem, who retired. According to a company spokesperson, Kareem, who had been the CEO since 2016, had his last day on Monday, and his retirement was in conjunction with Dennis' appointment.
"While cybersecurity technologies have evolved over the past decade, they have not kept up with the speed and impact of modern threats like double-extortion ransomware and software supply chain attacks," Dennis said in a news release. "ExtraHop’s innovation, team and culture are second to none, and I’m excited to lead this next stage of growth for the company.”
The CEO transition comes about seven months after private equity firms Bain Capital Private Equity and Crosspoint Capital Partners acquired ExtraHop for $900 million. When the acquisition plan was first announced in June, ExtraHop co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Jesse Rothstein told the Business Journal ExtraHop would operate independently as part of the firms' portfolios, and the company was still considering a future initial public offering.
According to his LinkedIn page, Dennis became CEO of Alvaria last year. Prior to that, he spent more than two years as CEO of Aspect Software, a contact center software company headquartered in Massachusetts. He has also held senior roles at EMC and Oracle, according to ExtraHop.
ExtraHop was founded in 2007 by Rothstein and Raja Mukerji, the company's chief customer officer. The two were previously senior architects at F5 Networks. Rothstein had been ExtraHop's CEO before Kareem took over the role.
ExtraHop offers network detection and response, a subset of cybersecurity that helps clients search for bad actors on their networks. ExtraHop's clients include Microsoft, PayPal and Adobe.
“Raja and I look forward to working with Patrick as we continue our mission to help our customers defend against the most advanced threats,” Rothstein said in a news release.
