Cybersecurity and Military Intelligence Veteran Mark Willis Joins Bluescape as Chief Information Security Officer

Infosec leader is focused on building advanced security initiatives at Bluescape through its people, products and customers.

San Carlos, CA, September 26, 2019 — Bluescape®, a leading visual collaboration platform, today announced that Mark Willis, cybersecurity and U.S. military intelligence veteran, has joined the company in the newly created position of Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). Willis is responsible for leading Bluescape’s data security and privacy efforts, and defining the company’s future security roadmap. He brings to Bluescape more than 25 years of diverse security-related experience, most recently as the Director of Software and Mobile Security for CVS/Aetna.

"The best way to ensure security within a product and across company operations is to make it as simple and frictionless as possible to the user or employee."

“At Bluescape, we’ve always believed in “security first” as one of our core principles,” said Peter Jackson, CEO of Bluescape. “We’re pleased to have Mark here for he’s a seasoned executive bringing deep enterprise and military infosec expertise. His leadership will extend our business into new markets, and drive our security initiatives further to keep our company, solutions and customers secure.”

Prior to his position at CVS/Aetna, Willis spent nearly a decade at Northrop Grumman as a senior software engineer responsible for the government contractor’s security-related efforts to serving as the IT liaison between the US Army INSCOM and NSA Personnel Divisions. Before that, he served in the United States Army as a counterintelligence special agent, stationed both at home in the U.S. and abroad in Haiti and Bosnia.

Bluescape has long been acknowledged for its stringent security mechanisms by several branches of the U.S. military which have deployed Bluescape for real-time situational awareness and strategic planning.

"The best way to ensure security within a product and across company operations is to make it as simple and frictionless as possible to the user or employee. The more hoops they have to jump through, the greater the security risk,” commented Mark Willis. “As a former developer, this starts with developers, engineers, and managers working together as a team toward a singular goal, and I look forward to bringing that philosophy to Bluescape and its products.”

Read Willis’ latest security blog entitled The Seismic Shift Towards Secure Collaboration.