Sophos, a cybersecurity solutions company, has announced the appointment of Joe Levy as its new chief executive officer (CEO). Levy, who had been serving as the interim CEO since Feb. 15, steps into the role permanently, bringing with him nearly three decades of experience in cybersecurity innovation and leadership.
In tandem with this transition, Sophos has also appointed Jim Dildine as the new chief financial officer (CFO), marking a significant expansion of the company’s senior management team.
Levy’s tenure at Sophos spans nine years, during which he has been instrumental in transforming the company from a product-centric vendor into a comprehensive cybersecurity provider. Under his guidance, Sophos launched an incident response team and a managed detection and response (MDR) service that protects over 21,000 organizations worldwide. Levy’s initiatives also include the creation of SophosAI and Sophos X-Ops, an operational threat intelligence unit combining over 500 cybersecurity experts from various departments.
Levy’s deep expertise extends to working with managed security providers (MSPs) and channel partners, a relationship he cultivated throughout his career, which began in the mid-1990s. As the new CEO, Levy aims to expand Sophos’ footprint in the midmarket sector, which currently includes nearly 600,000 customers and generates over $1.2 billion in annual revenue.
“When midmarket organizations — the global critical substrate — are paralyzed due to ransomware or other cyberattacks, business activities linked in our supply chains also stagnate, slowing our economy down,” Levy explained. “Our goal is to help more organizations in the midmarket — the estimated 99% of organizations that are below the cybersecurity poverty line — be better at detecting and disrupting inevitable cyberattacks.”
Jim Dildine
Levy’s vision includes leveraging partnerships with MSPs and channel partners to deliver scalable, innovative security solutions across various domains such as endpoint, network, email, and cloud security. He is committed to ensuring that midmarket organizations, which are often under-protected compared to larger enterprises, have the tools and support needed to defend against cyber threats.
To support this mission, Levy has named Jim Dildine as the CFO. Dildine brings a wealth of operational and financial expertise to Sophos. His previous roles include CFO positions at Imperva and Symantec’s $2.5 billion enterprise security business unit. At Blue Coat Systems, where Levy also served as chief technology officer, Dildine played a pivotal role in the company’s significant growth and multiple acquisitions, leading to its eventual sale to Symantec for $4.6 billion.
“Having worked in technology and finance for more than 30 years, it is exciting to join Sophos at this juncture, when the company is well on its way to breaking through to the next level,” Dildine said. “Everything the company has accomplished thus far is impressive, including how dedicated Sophos is to constantly be innovating its cybersecurity technology and managed security services for customers in the midmarket.”