blog

AppSec Phoenix Welcomes Mike Takla, Cybersecurity leader in sales, to its business advisory board

Mike Takla Joins Phoenix Security Advisory Board

Mikes’ leadership and year of field experience in cybersecurity strengthen the leadership and provide a sounding board for the sales strategy.

Mike Takla Joins Phoenix Security Advisory Board

LONDON, England (September 27, 2022)— AppSec Phoenix, the next-gen leader in Vulnerability and Posture Management for Cloud and Application security, has announced the addition of Mike Takla to its board. Mike joins the firm as an advisor adding to the board years of leadership and experience. 

Mike is a well-respected leader and advisor. Mike Takla is the co-founder & CRO of Hacknotice, previously, he was Director of Inside Sales at Security Scorecard. His several years of field and practical experience have given mike the best insight on how to measure and run teams.

“We are enthusiastically welcoming Mike in the Phoenix Security family and advisory board,” said Francesco Cipollone, CEO and founder of AppSec Phoenix. “Mike has helped us refine the sales process and the product go-to-market from day one, and now we are happy to welcome him as an advisor.”

“I am thrilled to be part of AppSec Phoenix’s advisory board and invest in the firm’s mission as it looks to scale its efforts and influence as a leader in the risk vulnerability sector,” said Mike. ” As a cyber security practitioner, I saw first-hand what complexity can do to an organization; risk has been the key to master and communicating with the business. I’ve seen it first hand in my years in cybersecurity.”

Mike joins an advisory board that boasts several notable names in the cybersecurity sector, including:

  • Andrew Peterson led Signal Science, a leading cybersecurity product, for five years before it sold to Fastly for $775M. Peterson brings startup knowledge, international support, exposure to the US market, and key introductions to customers. His insight into the American market and its current trends and his contacts with venture capitalists provide valuable insight to the advisory team. He also advises several companies and has been instrumental in providing Security Phoenix with key recommendations on getting a head start in product startup and potential pitfalls.
  • Christopher Hodson is an acclaimed leader, advisor, and investor with over a decade of experience in the tech and cybersecurity sectors. Christopher has a track record of board leadership, having served as CISO for Zscaler, and Tanium, and is currently at Contentful. Christopher is also a seasoned board executive, serving as a board advisor for Charted Institute of Information Security, CompTIA, and Cybrary.
  • Chris Romeo is an acclaimed leader, advisor, and investor with over twenty-five years of experience in the application and cybersecurity sectors. Chris Romeo is the Chief Security Officer and co-founder of Security Journey and is a leading voice and thinker in application security, threat modelling, and security culture. Chris is the host of the award-winning “Application Security Podcast” and is a highly rated industry speaker and trainer, featured at the RSA Conference, the AppSec Village @ DefCon, OWASP Global AppSec, ISC2 Security Congress, and All Day DevOps.
  • Xabi Errotabehere, who has more than 20 years of experience building world-class digital products. He co-founded Cloud Conformity, a Cloud Security Posture Management tool, and took the company in a high-growth mode before Trend Micro acquired it in 2019. Errotabehere brings insight into how to successfully manage a business in its early days and techniques to effectively go to market and acquire clients.
  • Vandana is Security Solutions Architect at Snyk. She is the Chair of the OWASP Global Board of Directors. Vandana leads Diversity Initiatives like InfosecGirls and WoSec. She is also the founder of InfosecKids. She has experience ranging from Application Security to Infrastructure and now dealing with Product Security. She has been Keynote speaker / Speaker / Trainer at various public events including Global OWASP AppSec events to BlackHat events to regional events like BSides events in India.

To learn more about AppSec Phoenix or to schedule a free demo, visit https://www.phoenix.security/request-a-demo/.


Francesco is an internationally renowned public speaker, with multiple interviews in high-profile publications (eg. Forbes), and an author of numerous books and articles, who utilises his platform to evangelize the importance of Cloud security and cutting-edge technologies on a global scale.

Discuss this blog with our community on Slack

Join our AppSec Phoenix community on Slack to discuss this blog and other news with our professional security team

From our Blog

Discover and fix CVE-2024-3094 vulnerability affecting Linux distributions liblzma, part of the xz package, Fedora, openSUSE, Debian, and Kali. Get the latest updates, fixes, and security recommendations to safeguard your system against unauthorized access through compromised XZ Utils. Protect and discover the affected system with ASPM, Application security Posture management
Francesco Cipollone
Discover and fix CVE-2024-3094 vulnerability affecting Linux distributions liblzma, part of the xz package, Fedora, openSUSE, Debian, and Kali. Get the latest updates, fixes, and security recommendations to safeguard your system against unauthorized access through compromised XZ Utils. Protect and discover the affected system with ASPM, Application security Posture management
Francesco Cipollone
Discover and fix CVE-2024-3094 vulnerability affecting Linux distributions liblzma, part of the xz package, Fedora, openSUSE, Debian, and Kali. Get the latest updates, fixes, and security recommendations to safeguard your system against unauthorized access through compromised XZ Utils. Protect and discover the affected system with ASPM, Application security Posture management
Francesco Cipollone
Explore the interplay between the MITRE ATT&CK framework and EPSS for effective vulnerability management. Learn how these tools help predict and prioritize cyber threats, with deep dives into the most and least exploited techniques. Stay ahead in cybersecurity with Phoenix’s advanced analysis.
Francesco Cipollone

Derek Fisher

Head of product security at a global fintech

Derek Fisher – Head of product security at a global fintech. Speaker, instructor, and author in application security.

Derek is an award winning author of a children’s book series in cybersecurity as well as the author of “The Application Security Handbook.” He is a university instructor at Temple University where he teaches software development security to undergraduate and graduate students. He is a speaker on topics in the cybersecurity space and has led teams, large and small, at organizations in the healthcare and financial industries. He has built and matured information security teams as well as implemented organizational information security strategies to reduce the organizations risk.

Derek got his start in the hardware engineering space where he learned about designing circuits and building assemblies for commercial and military applications. He later pursued a computer science degree in order to advance a career in software development. This is where Derek was introduced to cybersecurity and soon caught the bug. He found a mentor to help him grow in cybersecurity and then pursued a graduate degree in the subject.

Since then Derek has worked in the product security space as an architect and leader. He has led teams to deliver more secure software in organizations from multiple industries. His focus has been to raise the security awareness of the engineering organization while maintaining a practice of secure code development, delivery, and operations.

In his role, Jeevan handles a range of tasks, from architecting security solutions to collaborating with Engineering Leadership to address security vulnerabilities at scale and embed security into the fabric of the organization.

Jeevan Singh

Founder of Manicode Security

Jeevan Singh is the Director of Security Engineering at Rippling, with a background spanning various Engineering and Security leadership roles over the course of his career. He’s dedicated to the integration of security practices into software development, working to create a security-aware culture within organizations and imparting security best practices to the team.
In his role, Jeevan handles a range of tasks, from architecting security solutions to collaborating with Engineering Leadership to address security vulnerabilities at scale and embed security into the fabric of the organization.

James Berthoty

Founder of Latio Tech

James Berthoty has over ten years of experience across product and security domains. He founded Latio Tech to help companies find the right security tools for their needs without vendor bias.

Christophe Parisel

Senior Cloud Security Architect

Senior Cloud Security Architect

Chris Romeo

Co-Founder
Security Journey

Chris Romeo is a leading voice and thinker in application security, threat modeling, and security champions and the CEO of Devici and General Partner at Kerr Ventures. Chris hosts the award-winning “Application Security Podcast,” “The Security Table,” and “The Threat Modeling Podcast” and is a highly rated industry speaker and trainer, featured at the RSA Conference, the AppSec Village @ DefCon, OWASP Global AppSec, ISC2 Security Congress, InfoSec World and All Day DevOps. Chris founded Security Journey, a security education company, leading to an exit in 2022. Chris was the Chief Security Advocate at Cisco, spreading security knowledge through education and champion programs. Chris has twenty-six years of security experience, holding positions across the gamut, including application security, security engineering, incident response, and various Executive roles. Chris holds the CISSP and CSSLP certifications.

Jim Manico

Founder of Manicode Security

Jim Manico is the founder of Manicode Security, where he trains software developers on secure coding and security engineering. Jim is also the founder of Brakeman Security, Inc. and an investor/advisor for Signal Sciences. He is the author of Iron-Clad Java: Building Secure Web Applications (McGraw-Hill), a frequent speaker on secure software practices, and a member of the JavaOne Rockstar speaker community. Jim is also a volunteer for and former board member of the OWASP foundation.

Join our Mailing list!

Get all the latest news, exclusive deals, and feature updates.