Flashpoint Expands C-Suite Team With New Chief Intelligence Officer and Chief Product Officer

Appoints Tom Hofmann as CIO and names Patrick Gardner as first CPO to support company’s rapid growth

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--On the heels of a year of rapid growth that includes two acquisitions, Flashpoint, the globally trusted leader in actionable risk intelligence, today introduced Tom Hofmann as Chief Intelligence Officer (CIO) and Patrick Gardner as Chief Product Officer (CPO). Together, they bring more than 40 years of experience delivering intelligence and security products that help commercial and government organizations successfully identify cyber and physical threats, prevent attacks, and holistically reduce risk.

As CIO, Hofmann is responsible for Flashpoint’s overall intelligence strategy, including the norms, values, systems, processes, and culture of the company’s world-class analyst team. Prior to joining Flashpoint, Hofmann led cyber threat intelligence (CTI) operations at PNC, managed CTI collections at Booz Allen, and served as an Information Warfare Officer for the US Navy.

“Tom is one of the foremost intelligence and security experts in the world,” says Flashpoint CEO Josh Lefkowitz. “His experience, thought leadership, strong empathy with our customers, and perennial adaptability has transformed an incredibly talented group of individual analysts into a high-functioning, cross-collaborative team that efficiently handles the most difficult challenges our customers face today—from preventing ransomware attacks and card fraud to delivering on-the-ground situational awareness that supports national security and public safety missions.”

Gardner is a former executive at Symantec who most recently served as CTO at Time By Ping, an enterprise time-tracking software company. As CPO, Gardner will be responsible for Flashpoint’s overall product strategy, vision, and execution—delivering to customers a platform that helps them quickly identify and remediate risk across multiple use cases while leveraging artificial Intelligence and automation to accelerate repeatable security-related processes.

“In today’s world, threats are cross-functional. What drew me to Flashpoint is its mission to help protect our customers’ assets, infrastructure, and personnel, and its firm belief that intelligence matters everywhere in organizations—not just for a single team,” says Gardner. “I’m energized to lead the way in realizing our vision as a singular risk intelligence platform that empowers organizations to detect threats holistically and work cross-functionally to mitigate them rapidly.”

This year, Flashpoint completed two key acquisitions to support its growth as the go-to risk intelligence suite for CTI, Vulnerability Management, Corporate Security, Public Safety, National Security, and Government teams. In January, Flashpoint acquired vulnerability intelligence leader Risk Based Security (RBS); and in August, Flashpoint acquired open source intelligence leader Echosec Systems.

“As the security vendor consolidation trend continues, Chief Security Officers, Chief Risk Officers, and Intelligence leaders in the Global 2000 and public sector are mitigating risk daily in an increasingly volatile world and economy,” says Flashpoint President Donald Saelinger. “The same holds true for our public sector customers who rely on Flashpoint’s open-source intelligence for geopolitical risk assessments, counterterrorism missions, misinformation and disinformation identification and response, crisis response, and more. We couldn’t be more excited for Tom and Patrick to work together to deliver solutions that bring our clients’ security and intelligence programs to the next level.”

To learn more about how Flashpoint can help the security teams in your organization detect, prioritize, and mitigate threats faster, reach out for a free trial.

About Flashpoint

Trusted by governments, commercial enterprises, and educational institutions worldwide, Flashpoint helps organizations protect their most critical assets, infrastructure, and stakeholders from security risks such as cyber threats, ransomware, fraud, physical threats, and more. Leading security practitioners—including physical and corporate security, cyber threat intelligence (CTI), vulnerability management, and vendor risk management teams—rely on the Flashpoint Intelligence Platform, comprising open source (OSINT) and closed intelligence, to proactively identify and mitigate risk and stay ahead of the evolving threat landscape. Learn more at flashpoint.io.