Mindgard appoints industry veterans to lead AI security expansion

Mindgard has appointed Aaron Portnoy as Head of Research & Innovation and Tom Axbey as Board Director to support its focus on offensive security testing for artificial intelligence systems.

Portnoy is widely recognised within cybersecurity circles for his work in offensive security, particularly as the architect and judge of the first six Pwn2Own competitions, a prominent hacking contest that rewards successful demonstrations of zero-day exploits. He previously led the Zero Day Initiative at TippingPoint/3Com, which later became part of Trend Micro, and was also a co-founder of Exodus Intelligence, an exploit-intelligence firm.

In addition to his startup experience, Portnoy built the research and development programme at Randori, a security company later acquired by IBM. His career includes positions at Raytheon and most recently serving as the inaugural Hacker Fellow at Dartmouth College, where he was involved in interdisciplinary research in cybersecurity.

He now assumes the role of Head of Research & Innovation at Mindgard, leading applied research and product development initiatives. Portnoy commented:

"AI security is still in its infancy. As these systems become core to business operations, adversaries will increasingly target them in ways organizations aren't prepared for. At Mindgard, we're applying the offensive techniques that have protected applications for decades to defend AI from the ground up."

Tom Axbey has joined as Board Director, bringing with him more than two decades of leadership experience in enterprise software and software-as-a-service (SaaS). Axbey was previously Chief Executive Officer at CloudHealth, where he oversaw the company's emergence as a market leader with a customer base of more than 12,000 organisations. CloudHealth was subsequently acquired by VMware, and Axbey continued in a senior leadership role there as General Manager.

Prior to his work at CloudHealth, Axbey was CEO of Rave Mobile Safety and held several executive positions at companies including IBM, Micromuse, Quallaby, and American Internet Corporation. His track record has focused on scaling business operations and implementing processes to improve operational efficiency.

Reflecting on his appointment, Axbey stated:

"I'm proud to join this exceptional team and visionary investors to bring offensive security for AI to the enterprise. Mindgard's approach solves a critical and rapidly growing problem, and I'm excited to help scale the company to meet market demand."

The appointments follow Mindgard's stated objective to boost its operational capacity in both research and market expansion, aiming to address the growing need for defensive strategies in artificial intelligence adoption within enterprises.

Mindgard, founded at Lancaster University and supported by academic research, operates in the field of AI system security testing. The company provides offensive security testing, also known as red teaming, to identify and help safeguard against threats to AI systems, offering testing throughout the entire AI lifecycle.

The company views the addition of Portnoy and Axbey as strategic moves to increase its ability to conduct adversarial research and to meet demand for its services as businesses deploy AI in their core operations.