Okta's former security chief explains why he's joining $25 billion Splunk to help it securely move to the cloud

• On Tuesday, Splunk announced that Okta's former chief security officer Yassir Abousselham will join up as the new chief information security officer (CISO).
• Abousselham says he can bring his experience from Okta, a company that started on the cloud, to help $26 billion Splunk modernize its own offerings.
• He also says he brings to Splunk experience in securing highly sensitive data.
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Splunk just announced a new chief information security officer to help the $26 billion monitoring and security company as it securely moves its products to the cloud.

Splunk announced Tuesday that Yassir Abousselham will be joining the company as CISO. A cybersecurity veteran of over 20 years, he started his career as an ethical hacker - someone who hacks into companies to find vulnerabilities and bugs, in return for a bounty on each problem discovered. Over the course of his career, he has worked in security consulting, at Google, and most recently as identity management company Okta's chief security officer.

"Splunk is a company that's in hypergrowth," Abousselham told Business Insider. "I had been a fan of their products for the longest time. I'm really excited to join Splunk and have the opportunity to lead their information security program."

Abousselham was attracted by Splunk's growth potential in its products, number of customers, and geographical expansion. The company makes products to help developers track and analyze the immense amount of data being generated by modern software and IT infrastructure, in order to diagnose problems and ward against cyberattackers.

"As a CISO, I am excited to work for a company that is not only a leader in its field when it comes to the IT field but also helps solve some of the most serious problems," Abousselham said. "That's what makes me even more excited about this opportunity."

Abousselham says that growth will be a challenge, but it's a welcome one. In its latest earnings in November, Splunk reported that its software revenues grew 40% from the previous year, and total revenues grew 30%.

"When you have a company that increases its revenue by 40% year over year, it comes with its own pains but those customers to me translate to an opportunity for me to run a highly progressive information security program," Abousselham said. "It is an opportunity to hire and retain the best talent in the industry."

Increasing investments in cloud

The previous CISO Joel Fulton is leaving Splunk to start his own cybersecurity company, and he created a list of potential successors, including Abousselham. From there on out, Abousselham went through the interview process and was handed over the reins.

Now as CISO, Abousselham's goal is to continue Splunk's work in securing cloud infrastructure. Splunk started as a company that offered products in on-premise data centers, but it's gradually been moving to the cloud. He says security is more of a journey than a destination, and will require constant vigilance.

"That translates into increasing investments even further into the cloud environment to make sure it's secure," Abousselham said.

Notably, Okta's products started on the cloud, and Abousselham says he'll be able to bring this expertise to Splunk as it works to modernize its product offerings.

"I'm very familiar with the strategy and techniques on how to manage security programs for cloud infrastructure," Abousselham. "That will be the first thing I leverage from my experience at Okta."

Working in security for a security company

What's more, since Okta helps customers log in securely to their software, it holds highly sensitive information, and Abousselham says he has experience in securing this type of data.

Overall, Abousselham says he's excited about the opportunity to "work in security for a security company" and help customers solve their security problems. At Okta, he managed its efforts to help it become a leading security vendor and worked firsthand with customers. And at Splunk, he plans to use this approach to help customers effectively use Splunk's security programs.

"That information is obviously very interesting to attackers," Abousselham said. "Those hackers range for the casual hacker all the way to the more sophisticated and well-funded adversaries, and the ability to secure that data and all those experiences at Okta - those will definitely be the ones I want to leverage."

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