Twitter hires new CISO in industry veteran Rinki Sethi

Image: Twitter (supplied)

After leaving the position unfilled for months and suffering a major hack over the summer, Twitter has hired this week a new Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) in industry veteran Rinki Sethi.

Sethi joins Twitter from her previous role as Vice President and CISO at Rubrik, a cloud data management company.

Before that, Sethi also served as Vice President for Information Security at IBM, Vice President for Information Security at cyber-security firm Palo Alto Networks, Director & Head of Product Security at software giant Intuit, and in other cyber-security roles dating back to 2004, at companies like at eBay, Walmart, and PG&E.

In her new role at Twitter, Sethi will report to Nick Tornow, Platform lead. She will oversee Twitter's information security (InfoSec) posture, which includes areas like Enterprise Risk, Security Risk, Application Security, and Detection & Response.

Twitter says Sethi will also work closely with teams such as the Privacy & Data Protection to address key company initiatives, and will also keep Twitter staff and the company's board up to date on security-related issues.

Mike Convertino served as Twitter's previous CISO. Convertino left his position in December 2019, and the role remained unfilled.

Twitter has been criticized this summer for not filling the CISO role fast enough. The criticism came after the social network suffered a major security breach in July when hackers broke into Twitter's backend admin tools and defaced the timelines of tens of high-profile verified accounts with a cryptocurrency scam.

Sethi's hiring will quiet most of this criticism as the San Francisco-based exec is one of today's most respected infosec figures.

Outside her extensive career credentials, Sethi also stood on the boards of major security conferences (WyCiS and SecureWorld), consulted on infosec books, and received numerous industry awards.

In addition, Sethi was also one of the founders of an initiative to develop the first set of national cybersecurity badges and curriculum for the Girl Scouts of USA.