Twitter has announced that its head of security is no longer at the company, and its chief information security officer (CISO) will depart in the coming weeks. The shakeup comes after Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey stepped down as chief executive in November, handing the reins to top deputy Parag Agrawal, who has since reorganized the company's leadership structure.
Peiter Zatko, known as "Mudge" in the security community, is no longer head of security at the company. Prior to Twitter, Zatko oversaw security at Stripe, Google and the Defense Advanced Research and Project Agency. CISO Rinki Sethi will be departing in the coming weeks. Sethi, who joined Twitter in September 2020, was vice president and CISO at Rubrik, holding roles with IBM, Palo Networks, Intuit and eBay.
According to a memo from Agrawal, the changes follow "an assessment of how the organization was being led and the impact on top priority work." In addition, Agrawal said the "nature of this situation" limited what he was allowed to share with employees. Since taking over, Agrawal also dismissed Dantley Davis, chief design officer, and Michael Montano, head of engineering.
Lea Kissner, head of privacy engineering, will serve as interim CISO.
Kevin Dunne, President at Pathlock, a Flemington, New Jersey-based provider of unified access orchestration, says, "Twitter is under increasing scrutiny from investors and users to prove that it can provide a robust, secure platform that will not fall victim to the same type of attacks as were seen in the 2020 Twitter breaches. New CEO Parag Agrawal is much more closely aligned to the technology than Jack Dorsey was and understands the underlying security issues at play within Twitter. This latest move to reshape the security organization may be due to dissatisfaction with the progress made since the 2020 attack, or misalignment between the existing security team and the new technology vision. Regardless, whomever Twitter hires on next to fill these voids will be critical in building trust with investors and users, as well as providing confidence that the platform will be well positioned into the future."
