Amit Yoran (December 1, 1970 – January 3, 2025) was an American businessman, most notable as the chief executive officer of

Tenable, Inc. Tenable Holdings, Inc. is a cybersecurity company based in Columbia, Maryland. Its vulnerability scanner software Nessus, developed in 1998, is one of the most widely deployed vulnerability assessment solutions in the cybersecurity industry. ...

from January 2017 to December 2024. He was also a member of the board of directors of the Center for Internet Security.

Early life

Yoran was born in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

on December 1, 1970, to Israeli emigrants who arrived in the 1960s. He obtained a B.S. in computer science from the

United States Military Academy The United States Military Academy (USMA), commonly known as West Point, is a United States service academies, United States service academy in West Point, New York that educates cadets for service as Officer_(armed_forces)#United_States, comm ...

and served as one of the founding members of the US Department of Defense's Computer Emergency Response Team. He received a M.S. in computer security from

George Washington University The George Washington University (GW or GWU) is a Private university, private University charter#Federal, federally-chartered research university in Washington, D.C., United States. Originally named Columbian College, it was chartered in 1821 by ...

Career

In April 1998, during the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (or dot-com boom) was a stock market bubble that ballooned during the late-1990s and peaked on Friday, March 10, 2000. This period of market growth coincided with the widespread adoption of the World Wide Web and the Interne ...

, along with his two brothers and Tim Belcher, Yoran co-founded Riptech. It began operations in December 1999 and raised $45 million in

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

from Columbia Capital, Providence Equity, and Broadview Capital. It was sold to Symantec (now

Gen Digital Gen Digital Inc. (formerly Symantec Corporation and NortonLifeLock Inc.) is a multinational software company co-headquartered in both Prague, Czech Republic (European Union, EU) and Tempe, Arizona (United States, USA). The company provides comp ...

) in August 2002 for $145 million in cash. In September 2003, he was named director of the newly created

National Cyber Security Division The National Cyber Security Division (NCSD) is a division of the Office of Cyber Security & Communications, within the United States Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Formed from the Critical In ...

within the

United States Department of Homeland Security The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the U.S. United States federal executive departments, federal executive department responsible for public security, roughly comparable to the Interior minister, interior, Home Secretary ...

. There, he oversaw the creation of a cyber alert system that sends out warnings about

computer virus A computer virus is a type of malware that, when executed, replicates itself by modifying other computer programs and Code injection, inserting its own Computer language, code into those programs. If this replication succeeds, the affected areas ...

es and net attacks. He resigned from the position abruptly in October 2004. In January 2006, he was named CEO of

In-Q-Tel In-Q-Tel (IQT), formerly Peleus and In-Q-It, is an American not-for-profit venture capital firm based in Arlington, Virginia. It invests in companies to keep the Central Intelligence Agency, and other intelligence agencies, equipped with the lates ...

. He resigned in April 2006 after less than four months in the position. At that time, he was also a member of the board of directors of Trust Digital, Guidance Software, and Guardium. In November 2006, he was named CEO of

Netwitness NetWitness is a network security company that provides real-time network forensics automated threat detection, response, and analysis solutions. The company is based in Bedford, Massachusetts. In 2011, NetWitness was acquired by EMC Corporation a ...

. In October 2014, Yoran was named president of RSA. Effective January 2017, he was named CEO of

In August 2023, he accused

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

of putting its customers at risk after he revealed the existence of a

zero-day vulnerability A zero-day (also known as a 0-day) is a vulnerability or security hole in a computer system unknown to its developers or anyone capable of mitigating it. Until the vulnerability is remedied, threat actors can exploit it in a zero-day exploit, or z ...

Microsoft Azure Microsoft Azure, or just Azure ( /ˈæʒər, ˈeɪʒər/ ''AZH-ər, AY-zhər'', UK also /ˈæzjʊər, ˈeɪzjʊər/ ''AZ-ure, AY-zure''), is the cloud computing platform developed by Microsoft. It has management, access and development of ...

Personal life and death

Yoran was married to Catherine Lotrionte and had three children, including a set of twins. Yoran died from cancer on January 3, 2025, at the age of 54.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yoran, Amit 1970 births 2025 deaths American technology chief executives Deaths from cancer in Maryland George W. Bush administration personnel United States Department of Homeland Security officials United States Military Academy alumni