He will report directly to Jay Rossiter, SVP of Platforms & Personalization Products

Mar 11, 2014 12:03 GMT  ·  By

The rumors have been confirmed. Yahoo has appointed Alex Stamos as the company’s new vice president of information security (CISO). Stamos will report directly to Jay Rossiter, SVP of Platforms & Personalization Products.

“Alex will lead all aspects of information security at Yahoo, including our team of Yahoo ‘Paranoids’, charged with making our products as secure as possible,” Rossiter noted in a blog post.

“This is a broad role which includes implementing top-to-bottom security for our products and systems but also to lead the company and the industry in not just how security works today but how it needs to work in the future.”

Rumors about Stamos joining Yahoo have been circulating since late February. Yahoo didn’t have a CISO since Justin Somaini left the company in January 2013, shortly after cybercriminals exploited an XSS vulnerability for a spam campaign.

Before joining Yahoo, Stamos founded iSEC Partners and served as CTO of Artemis. More recently, he became known as one of the organizers of TrustyCon, a one-day security conference launched after many experts decided to boycott the RSA Conference.

Stamos hasn’t said anything yet regarding his new position. He has only posted a link to the announcement made by Yahoo on Twitter.