Ionic Security announced executive leadership changes to help lead the company's next wave of growth and expansion. Existing Ions Robert Ball and Bill LeBlanc have assumed additional responsibilities in sales and customer success that build upon their accomplishments in business development and technical integrations. New Ions Darrell Swope, Joseph Ward, and Sean Allen have joined to lead engineering, product management, and marketing, respectively.

"This executive team knows how to scale a high-growth technology platform business," explained Ionic CEO Eric Hinkle. "They have a passion for our mission and an incredible depth of experience to solve the data trust challenges our customers face as we continue to build the Ionic brand."

Robert Ball, chief revenue officer and general counsel, will now lead the company's unified go-to-market strategy, overseeing sales, marketing, and business development, as he continues to also serve as Ionic's chief legal counsel. He sees similarities between Ionic and the dramatic growth and expansion he experienced during the early years at Akamai Technologies: "Being part of the explosive growth of Akamai was incredible, and I see even greater potential in Ionic. We are experiencing the perfect storm of digital transformation, cloud migration, and greater awareness of consumer privacy, all occurring at a time when data breaches and threats are increasing. The world is desperate for a scalable platform that recognizes that traditional approaches are failing, and Ionic is perfectly positioned to provide the glue that can offer integrated protection, control, and visibility."

"The Ionic platform enables development teams to easily add a unified security layer that provides just-in-time policy, and visibility over access to the data that their applications are producing and using," shared Bill LeBlanc, vice president of integrations and enablement. "I'm excited to lead the team at Ionic charged with helping our customers and partners realize data trust in their organizations, and in their products. In every engagement there is that magical moment when they begin to understand the power of trusting and verifying their data is safe no matter where it travels."

Darrell Swope, vice president of engineering, also drew upon his past successes at Internet Security Systems, where he worked with then-CEO Tom Noonan, who currently serves as executive chairman of the board at Ionic: "Seeing Tom at Ionic was a sign that something important is happening here -- something that could change data security in a fundamental way. The combination of strong encryption and granular policy-driven access at scale is a key differentiator for us, securing data in a trust model that makes it seamlessly accessible, while protecting against unauthorized use."

"My previous professional experience centered directly on the security axis," agreed Joseph Ward, vice president of product management, "and over the years I've seen breach after breach, almost all of which could have been prevented if the data had been secured with Ionic. Protecting the data at the object level while reducing the actual management overhead of the data protection scheme means that, with Ionic, it's now cost-effective to adopt the security controls that will actually prevent the losses organizations are experiencing every day."

"The market opportunity at Ionic, the enormous impact this vision can have, is unlike anything I've seen," emphasized Sean Allen, vice president of marketing, "The pull to join this outstanding team was downright magnetic. Leveraging the amazing accomplishments to date, focused on a massive market, is an exciting challenge I am thrilled to accept. The business acceleration enabled bya digital environment where trust is the default -- not some elusive dream even in our Zero Trust reality -- is transformational on an epic scale."

The expanded leadership team at Ionic will focus on accelerating adoption of Ionic Data Trust Platform under the themes of openness, accessibility, and pervasiveness, driving quick time to value across our ecosystem of customers, partners, and developers.