AMAZON has appointed Kevin Mandia to its board of directors, appointing a cybersecurity veteran with more than 30 years of public and private sector experience. Mandia was elected to the board on 8 September, with the announcement highlighting his track record defending large organisations and investing in emerging security companies as a key benefit to Amazon’s governance as cybersecurity risks evolve alongside advances in artificial intelligence.
Mandia is the founder and CEO of Armadin and a co-founder and general partner at Ballistic Ventures. He is best known for founding Mandiant, the incident response and threat intelligence company that was acquired by FireEye in 2013, before Mandiant was separated again and Google completed its acquisition in 2022 and integrated the unit into Google Cloud.
His pre‑private sector service includes roles as a computer security officer at the Pentagon and as a special agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, along with participation on the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s Cybersecurity Advisory Committee.
Amazon asserts that Mandia’s experience defending large organisations and investing in security startups will inform board-level oversight as cybersecurity threats continue to evolve.