Forcepoint Announces Promotion of Ryan Windham to Chief Executive Officer

Windham, formerly Chief Customer and Strategy Officer, succeeds Manny Rivelo as part of planned leadership transition

Global security leader Forcepoint today announced the promotion of Ryan Windham, Chief Customer and Strategy Officer, to Chief Executive Officer (CEO), succeeding Manny Rivelo, who is retiring from his position as CEO of the company. These transitions will be effective immediately with Rivelo continuing to serve in an advisory capacity through August 1, 2024.

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Ryan Windham to succeed Manny Rivelo as Forcepoint CEO (Photo: Business Wire)

"The Board extends its gratitude for the many achievements Forcepoint has accomplished under Manny’s leadership, including the sale of the Government business and navigating through the challenging pandemic years while driving the company’s organizational and technological transformation," said Andrew Kowal, Partner at Francisco Partners.

Windham brings 25 years of innovation and customer-first leadership experience in cybersecurity, automation and AI/ML to his role as CEO. As Chief Customer and Strategy Officer, he was instrumental in leading critical cross-functional collaboration across Customer Success, Product Management, and Go-to-Market functions to optimally align both the business mission and product roadmap to meet customers’ strategic business needs around the globe.

Prior to joining Forcepoint in 2023, Windham was CEO at AppViewX, a leader in low-code/no-code automation, helping to drive a 95 percent customer retention rate and 80 percent subscription revenue growth year-over-year. He also served as CEO at Cedexis, acquired by Citrix in 2018, which utilized AI/ML to enable real-time optimization of application delivery across clouds, CDNs and data centers. Earlier in his career, Windham held senior management positions at industry-leading security and infrastructure companies including Imperva, F5 Networks and Websense.

"Forcepoint is well positioned for the future as a leader in uniquely prioritizing data security across all possible touchpoints and devices where people generate and store sensitive information. Ryan’s strategic and innovative mindset will propel the company forward through today’s exciting shift in business – utilizing and securing AI for competitive advantage,” said Brian Decker, Partner at Francisco Partners.

“This is a full circle moment for me, returning to lead Forcepoint after spending nearly a decade of my early career at Websense in corporate and product development roles,” said Windham. “I’ve worked closely with Manny to advance Forcepoint’s engineering in language models and generative AI, pushing data security innovation. I look forward to continuing collaboration across the company to help our customers and partners worldwide securely accelerate their transformation strategies for the future.”

About Forcepoint

Forcepoint simplifies security for global businesses and governments. Forcepoint’s all-in-one, truly cloud-native platform makes it easy to adopt Zero Trust and prevent the theft or loss of sensitive data and intellectual property no matter where people are working. Based in Austin, Texas, Forcepoint creates safe, trusted environments for customers and their employees in more than 150 countries. Engage with Forcepoint on www.forcepoint.com, Twitter and LinkedIn.

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