SCYTHE Expands Cybersecurity Leadership with Key Hires

Names Elizabeth Wharton Operations Lead and Stephanie Simpson Heads Product Development

ARLINGTON, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SCYTHE, a cybersecurity industry leader in adversarial emulation and breach and attack simulation, today announced that it has added two key members to its senior management team.

Elizabeth Wharton has been named Vice President of Operations and Stephanie Simpson will lead the company’s product development efforts, according to Bryson Bort, CEO and Founder of SCYTHE.

“Both Liz and Stephanie are experienced and successful masters of their craft and will help SCYTHE dramatically accelerate our operations and product development efforts,” said Bort. “SCYTHE is committed to diversity and inclusion in the cybersecurity industry. And we are more than thrilled to walk the walk with the appointment of these two accomplished individuals to key leadership roles.”

These executive promotions and new hires also shatter norms in an often diversity-challenged industry.

Elizabeth Wharton, VP of Operations

Elizabeth (Liz) is VP of Operations at SCYTHE where she serves as a strategic advisor for the CEO and leadership team, building and maintaining cross-department relationships, crafting external initiatives, and driving day-to-day projects and tasks. Known as “Lawyer Liz” on popular social media platforms, Wharton brings more than a decade of legal, policy, and business experience within the information security field.

Prior to joining SCYTHE she served as Vice President of Operations and Strategy for a third-party risk threat intelligence platform startup, scaling the company from 5 to 25+ employees and successfully completing a $10m Series A funding round. Previously she was the Senior Assistant City Attorney with the City of Atlanta responsible for advising Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on technology policy and projects – including the airport’s “first of its kind” safety risk assessment and integration of drones into airfield operations at the “World’s Busiest Airport.” She also served on the immediate incident response team for the City of Atlanta’s ransomware incident.

The former host of the “Buzz Off with Lawyer Liz” tech-focused radio show and podcast, Liz is a frequent podcast guest and speaker on risk mitigation and regulatory policy on IoT, drone, and aviation cybersecurity issues at conferences including SXSW, ShmooCon, Hack the Capitol, the Talos Threat Research Summit (Cisco Live!), and the GSMA Global Innovation Forum. She serves on various national technology and information security regulatory working groups, including the Business Executives for National Security’s Tech and Innovation Council, and is a mentor for startup accelerators. She received her J.D. from Georgia State University College of Law and her B.A. from Virginia Tech.

Stephanie Simpson, Vice President of Product

Stephanie is SCYTHE's Vice President of Product and leads the company’s product team. She's spent over 20 years disrupting industry norms with hardware and software solutions that provide winning customer experiences. Thanks to her extensive technology product management experience, she maintains a keen focus on iterative customer research, and executes at the pace required for early-stage company success. Stephanie builds teams that bring innovative ideas to market, is skilled at solving complex business and technical challenges, and excels in fast growth, ambiguous, changing environments.

Stephanie holds a Bachelors of Mechanical Engineering degree from the University of Delaware.

About SCYTHE

SCYTHE provides an advanced adversary emulation platform for the enterprise and cybersecurity consulting market. The SCYTHE platform enables Red, Blue, and Purple cybersecurity teams to build and emulate real-world adversarial campaigns in a matter of minutes. Customers can enable and validate the risk posture and exposure of their business and employees, as well as the performance of enterprise security teams and existing security solutions.

Based in Arlington, VA, the company is privately held and is funded by Gula Tech Adventures, Paladin Capital, Evolution Equity, and private industry investors. For more information email [e-mail], visit https://scythe.io, or follow on Twitter @scythe_io.