New EMEA CIO Simpson, who will be based at the Netskope EMEA office in Germany, will work closely alongside EMEA CISO Neil Thacker, supporting Netskope customers in securing their digital strategies and implementing effective SASE architectures.
Simpson brings an in-depth understanding of the journey and challenges faced by her peers, towards achieving organisational agility and simplicity, while ensuring security and managing threats and risk.
Prior to joining Netskope, Simpson held CIO and senior IT leadership roles with major automotive, supply chain, utilities and consumer goods companies, including the positions of vice-president, CIO & transformation office at Adidas; CIO UK of Porsche; and vice-president of IT at DHL.
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“From the CIO perspective, I have experienced first hand the ways that cyber security can evolve from being an obstacle to ultimately become an enabler. The most important shift to achieve this is, I believe, changing the relationship between security and performance to remove frictional trade-offs,” said new Netskope CIO EMEA, Simpson.
“I’ve spoken to other technology companies about roles in the past, but Netskope’s vision – and the architecture it has built to deliver that vision – sets it apart. Every conversation I have had with the team at Netskope has been energising.
“Since its foundation, the pace at which Netskope has moved, the technological brilliance it has demonstrated, and the market understanding it possesses are incredibly appealing and ultimately led me to know that this is a team I wanted to be a part of.”
Mike Anderson, global chief digital and information officer of Netskope, commented: “We built our existing environments for a time when people worked in offices, and applications and data were hosted in data centres. We want to help companies re-architect their environments for the new hybrid way of working and cloud-first world, ultimately allowing their people to be secure and productive while working from anywhere.
“To do that, we need a team of international experts who have walked a mile in the shoes of the CIOs we support. Ilona has walked many miles in those shoes, and we are incredibly excited that she is bringing that experience to Netskope and our European customers.”
Last year, Netskope attracted $300 million in new investment, achieving a post-money valuation of $7.5 billion on top of rapid growth in the SASE space, which analysts estimate to be a $30 billion total addressable market by 2024.
