Linode, the world’s largest independent cloud computing infrastructure provider, appointed Joseph Zhou as Chief Information Security Officer (CISO).
Zhou will lead all aspects of security risk management for Linode, including enterprise security architecture, governance, product and platform security, network security, secure software development, security awareness training, penetration and vulnerability management, identity and access management, incident response, disaster recovery, business continuity, and supply chain security risk management.
“Security is integral to everything we do,” said Christopher Aker, founder and CEO of Linode. “And it is going to get harder and more critical for companies to stay ahead of the onslaught of threats they face on a daily basis. Joe’s wealth of experience building world class security architecture and embedding it into the processes and products that sit on top of that architecture will play a significant role in helping us harden the cloud infrastructure millions of developers and companies have come to rely on.”
In a February 2021 survey, Accelerated Strategies Group asked 385 DevOps professionals to identify the most important attributes for a cloud infrastructure service provider to possess. More than 50% of the responses ranked “Provides Excellent Data Security” as a critical attribute. Fifty-eight percent cited security and privacy concerns as a roadblock to using cloud infrastructure.
“Successfully implementing robust security controls at a massive scale requires a strategic and calculated mindset. You have to instill a methodically paranoid mindset across the company to cultivate a healthy and strong security culture,” said Zhou. “Companies need to be confident that their business is protected. They need to trust the providers they work with. Linode runs on a foundation of developer trust. It’s my and my team’s job to ensure that trust is maintained and strengthened.”
Zhou brings broad experience managing cyber security practices at scale, as well as extensive architecture leadership and systems engineering experience designing massively scalable security control systems and instilling a secure-by-design approach to company culture. He previously held CISO roles at Evive and Transworld Systems. At Evive he was responsible for the company’s SOC 2, GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, and HITRUST security and privacy compliance as well as the architecture and controls for commercial SaaS platform, cloud, infrastructure and application security. Most recently at Transworld Systems, he was responsible for security compliance controls mandated by HIPAA, PCI DSS Service Level 1, SOC 1, SOC 2 and FedRAMP and implemented innovative machine learning-based threat detection capabilities at the company.
Zhou earned a Master of Computer Science in Networking and Software Engineering from The University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, a Master of Business Administration from The University of Chicago – Booth School of Business, and an Advanced Cybersecurity Certificate from Stanford University. He is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University’s Chief Information Security Officer Certificate Program.
Zhou’s appointment follows recent expansion of Linode’s senior leadership team including Will Charnock who joins as CTO.
Linode also announced two new free security services for developers building on the Linode cloud. Linode Cloud Firewall filters traffic at the network level, giving developers more control over who can reach their applications or data. Linode VLAN gives developers the ability to create public or private networks between Linodes in the same data center. Customers can find the full list of the free bundled services Linode offers at https://www.linode.com/benefits/
