Forcepoint Snags Former Arista, F5 Exec Manny Rivelo As CEO

Forcepoint has named Manny Rivelo, John DiLullo and Dave Stevens to senior executive positions following the platform security vendor’s $1.1 billion sale from Raytheon to private equity firm Francisco Partners.

Forcepoint has named a slate of new senior-level executives following the company’s $1.1 billion sale from Raytheon to private equity firm Francisco Partners.

The Austin, Texas-based platform security vendor tapped former Arista Networks chief customer officer and F5 Networks and AppViewX CEO Manny Rivelo to lead the company going forward. Rivelo will replace Matthew Moynahan, who had run Forcepoint since May 2016, shortly after the company was formed from the combination of Websense, Stonesoft, Sidewinder and Raytheon’s security business.

“As we continue to see broad-scale global attacks, the cybersecurity industry needs to evolve to deliver security capabilities to match those of today’s sophisticated threat actors,” Rivelo said in a statement. “I look forward to solidifying Forcepoint’s leadership position as the global cybersecurity partner of choice for enterprises and government agencies.”

[Related: Raytheon Unloads Security Subsidiary Forcepoint To Private Equity]

Rivelo most recently served as networking vendor Arista’s chief customer officer from January 2018 to January 2020, which followed a two-year stint as CEO of data center services provider AppViewX. Prior to that, Rivelo spent four and a half years at F5 Networks, where he served as president and CEO of the 4,000-person application delivery vendor for the final six months of his tenure.

As CEO, Forcepoint said Rivelo will focus on accelerating enterprise and government agency adoption of the company’s Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) architecture. The company said its SASE platform is cloud-native, end-user-aware and available today through Forcepoint Cloud Security Gateway and Private Access. Forcepoint didn’t immediately respond to a request for additional comment.

Joining Rivelo at Forcepoint will be F5 colleague John DiLullo, who will lead Forcepoint’s worldwide sales and business development teams as chief revenue officer. DiLullo led worldwide sales at F5 during and after Rivelo’s brief tenure as CEO, and subsequently took over as CEO of network detection and response firm Lastline in July 2018. The anti-malware research firm was sold to VMware two years later.

Also joining the Forcepoint executive team is Dave Stevens, who will support the company’s global go-to-market strategy and expansion of commercial technology opportunities as senior vice president of strategy and execution. Stevens co-founded Palo Alto Networks and served as the company’s CEO from 2005 to 2008, and served two stints as Brocade’s chief technology officer from 2003 to 2004 and again from 2008 to 2013.

Forcepoint also promoted Sean Berg to president for global governments and critical infrastructure, where he will look to grow in the cross-domain and insider threat security segments. Berg joined Forcepoint in May 2017 as vice president of sales for global governments, and added revenue and technology responsibilities for the company’s critical infrastructure team to his plate five months later.

Moynahan wasn’t mentioned in the press release announcing Forcepoint’s CEO change despite leading the company for nearly five years. Forcepoint recorded $658 million in revenue as a division of Raytheon in 2019, up 4 percent from $634 million in 2018. Raytheon acquired private equity firm Vista Equity Partners’ interest in Forcepoint for $588 million in the fourth quarter of 2019.

Moynahan told CRN in 2018 that he hoped to get Forcepoint from $608 million of yearly revenue in 2017 to $1 billion of annual revenue within its next three-year plan. The company historically worked with more than 10,000 SMB-focused channel partners when it was Websense, but going forward was looking to have the majority of its business flow through less than 1,000 channel partners, Moynahan said in 2018.