Cyber company OwlGaze has announced the appointment of Miro Pihkanen as its Chief Security Officer and Member of the Board. The company said that he will be advising OwlGaze on the predictive threat detection solution, Blacklight, and will be investing vital domain expertise during its final stages of development. 

The appointment news comes at a time when many companies are leveraging cyber security as an important factor in their business strategy. 

Ralph Chammah, CEO of OwlGaze, said, “I am delighted to welcome Miro into our team – I have had the privilege of working with him in the past and seeing first-hand his unparalleled expertise in the cybersecurity space. He will be a fantastic asset for OwlGaze and will allow us to level up into one of the leading organisations in our field, both in APAC and globally”.

Pihkanen was previously with Deloitte, where he served as the Cyber Lead Partner for Hong Kong & Macau. He was responsible for establishing and building out Deloitte’s cybersecurity practices in Australia and Hong Kong. Prior to this, Pihkanen worked in PwC and held global cybersecurity roles at Macquarie Bank and Nestlé. 

Commenting on his new role, Pihkanen said, “I’m ecstatic to join OwlGaze at such a perilous time. Many organisations are playing a never-ending catch-up game with increasingly sophisticated cyber criminals. The vision of the OwlGaze team perfectly aligns with my experience and thinking. We both understand that cyber threats can’t only be managed within individual enterprises, but that a more holistic approach is needed.”

He also said that the company’s mission is to help proactively detect and prevent multi-disciplinary cyber threats, not just singular events and the company is to truly leverage AI and ML, not just scatter randomly trendy buzzwords into marketing materials. 

Commenting on the appointment, Anastasios Papadopoulos, Board Member at OwlGaze on behalf of IMS Digital Ventures, said: “We have been following Miro’s work for a while and we are very impressed by the complexity of the projects he has carried out in the past. It’s a big win for us to have such a thought leader in the industry join the OwlGaze team”.