Tom Corn, former SVP of security at VMware, is the latest executive to depart the company in search of greener pastures. Corn today announced he’s joined managed security and networking vendor Open Systems as CPO.

“Once in a while something pops up that you just can’t not do,” he told SDxCentral in an exclusive interview. “I didn’t leave VMware to go do this lightly. I thought this really was the most substantial… opportunity I think I’ve seen in a while.”

As CPO, Corn will oversee product management, marketing, and engineering at Open Systems. “It’s really charting the vision and building the solutions for the products that we’re bringing to market,” he said.

Open Systems has evolved from a security-centric SD-WAN vendor into a full-fledged secure access service edge (SASE) and extended detection and response (XDR) provider during the last two years.

Corn joins Open Systems just months after the company appointed Geoff Haydon as CEO. The two have a long history of working together. “I’ve been fortunate to work with Geoff several times. We worked together at RSA. We worked together at VMware. We’ve partnered together when he spent his time at Secureworks,” he said. “I’m a big fan of Geoff’s.”

More Than Two Decades of Cybersecurity Experience

Corn brings with him more than 20 years of experience in the cybersecurity arena, including six years at RSA, three as chief strategy officer.

Corn later joined VMware at the request of former CEO Pat Gelsinger, who recently left to lead Intel. There, he spent eight years shaping VMware’s security strategy and oversaw the development of VMware’s microsegmentation capabilities, and later the company’s App Defense platform. The latter was merged with Carbon Black following the acquisition in 2019.

“I’ve never had more fun than when I’m getting an opportunity to build something and really create solutions out of it,” Corn said. “Candidly that’s really what attracted me to Open [Systems].”

Pulling the Thread on Networking, Security, and AI

The chance to get his hands dirty building products again is one of the most exciting opportunities surrounding his move to Open Systems, according to Corn.

Following its acquisition of artificial intelligence operations (AIOps) vendor Sqooba and security startup Born in the Cloud in early 2020, Corn said Open Systems is well-positioned to develop a product that can not only simplify security but address the shortage of talent across the industry.

Corn pointed to Open Systems' deep integrations with Microsoft security stack, including Azure Sentinel, as a major motivator. “That really caught my attention and started the conversations with the company,” he said, adding that Microsoft has been VMware’s “largest existential threat” when it comes to security.

Open Systems has also done some “really interesting work” to combine its SASE, XDR, and managed detection and response (MDR) products with Microsoft’s security stack, he said.

Corn Champions Customer-First Approach

Corn has long championed a customer-first approach, and he intends to continue that push at Open Systems.

“I’ve spent a really substantial portion of my time on the road — these days more virtually than physically — working with customers,” he said. “I’ve been fortunate over the last 20 years of my career to develop very close relationships with a lot of security teams and companies around the world, many of whom have really become mentors and advisors to me.”

Open Systems embodies this same philosophy, Corn added. “They have actually quite a formal system for working with customers as advisors in the development of products.”

Corn aims to leverage this close working relationship to help align Open System’s core competencies to address three of what he believes are the biggest pain points facing the industry.

The first of these challenges is the sheer number of security tools enterprises rely on every day. “They’re dealing with an average of over 50 security products, relegating them to be really a systems integrator,” Corn said.

This creates the opportunity for attackers to exploit the misconfiguration of these tools to breach defenses.

“There is a huge opportunity for a company that can decrease the number of tools and create something where the pieces integrate,” Corn said. “It’s the complexity that’s killing security.”

The second issue on Corn’s list are management silos. “You have workload security, endpoint security, you have access controls,” he said, adding that attackers don’t target any one of these domains. They find an opening and they exploit it. “It just so happens those attacks happen across the workload and network domains.”

The final challenge is the shortage of talent facing IT teams.

“There is a huge problem in our industry. There were so many open positions and it’s incredibly difficult to hire and retain the talent to do this,” he said. “It’s not simply threat hunting talent or detection and response talent, it’s the talent to know how to configure, and harden, and maintain hygiene in an environment that is constantly changing across so many services.”

The impetus being that by tying together workload security, endpoint, and network security into a unified package that integrates with customers' existing deployments, there’s an opportunity to lighten the load on IT teams.

“It’s really the intersection of those three things that I think Open [Systems] is really starting to bring these different pieces around, and that’s really the thread that I’m going to be pulling on in terms of product and service strategy,” he said.

Pedal to the Metal

In his first days, Corn plans to visit each of the company’s locations in California, Hawaii, and Switzerland to get to know the team. Then he plans to work with customers to shape the development of Open Systems' products, explore existing offerings, and stitch together a unified security service that encompasses SASE, XDR, and everything in between.

“We’re about to really step on the gas pedal in this company,” Corn said.