RapidFort, a leading innovator in cybersecurity pioneering Software Attack Surface Management (SASM), today announced the appointment of Ben de Waal as Vice President of Research and Development. De Waal joins RapidFort as a highly skilled engineer and entrepreneur with more than 65 patents to his name and a proven track record of leading and growing teams in both large organizations and startups.
At RapidFort, de Waal will be responsible for next-generation product development, focusing on enhancing RapidFort’s offerings to meet the evolving demands of security and development teams. Prior to joining RapidFort, de Waal held various senior roles at technology companies, most notably serving as Vice President of GPU Software at NVIDIA. There he led the development of GPU and CUDA products and worked closely with industry partners to help shape the direction of modern GPU technology, significantly improving graphics processing performance for both consumer and enterprise markets.
After his time at NVIDIA, de Waal co-founded IonGrid, where he served as CTO and developed a secure platform for remote document access. His work addressed the critical security challenges of “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) policies, which led to IonGrid’s acquisition by NetApp in 2013. Later, as Founding CTO of HintMD, de Waal created an innovative FinTech platform tailored to the medical aesthetics industry, streamlining client-provider interactions and facilitating HintMD’s acquisition by Revance Therapeutics in 2020.
“We’re working to develop our next-generation capabilities at RapidFort, and Ben is exactly the leader we need to make this vision a reality,” said Russ Andersson, Chief Operating Officer of RapidFort. “His unique blend of technical expertise, strategic insight, and entrepreneurial spirit makes him an exceptional fit for this role, and we’re thrilled for him to lead the projects that will shape our future.”
RapidFort is a cybersecurity platform revolutionizing software development through streamlining vulnerability remediation. The platform empowers developers to secure applications effortlessly in three steps with: Curated base images, container instrumentation and profiling, and continual hardening and monitoring. By automating vulnerability remediation, RapidFort offers customers a near zero CVE foundation for their base, framework and 3rd party application open-source software. This innovative approach delivers substantial cost savings, including a 10% reduction in software development expenses, a 2-3 week decrease in time-to-market for major releases, and a 3% decrease in infrastructure costs. Ultimately, RapidFort dramatically lowers the overall cost of securing software while ensuring compliance with industry standards like NIST Zero Trust, DoD requirements, FedRAMP and SOC 2.
“I’m thrilled to be joining RapidFort at this inflection point in the company’s journey,” said de Waal. “I’ve always felt security should be an integral part of the development process, not an afterthought, and at RapidFort they’re making that happen. I’m looking forward to working with this talented team to enhance our solutions and make securing software easier and more accessible.”
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