Silent Circle taps Bill Conner as CEO
Silent Circle has appointed Bill Conner as the firm's new CEO and a new member of the board responsible for the Blackphone.
The management change was announced on Monday. Bill Conner once served as founder and CEO of FWC Consulting, worked at cybersecurity firm Entrust and has 30 years' experience in security, SaaS, data networks, M&A, marketing and sales.
Mike Janke, Silent Circle co-founder -- who will now assume the position of Chairman of the Board -- said:
"Bill brings a wealth of experience and has been a vanguard of three of the Digital Information Age's most transformational technology shifts, having led key divisions at AT&T, taken Nortel into data with the acquisition of Bay Networks which was critical to repositioning the company in the industry and worked to secure digital identities with Entrust.
Bill is the perfect CEO to lead us during this time of massive revenue, personnel and product growth, as we transition from a start-up to a global corporation with revenues in the hundreds-of-millions of dollars -- and with operations and employees all over the world."
An investor in Silent Circle, Ross Perot Jr., said the company has experienced "unprecedented levels of growth" in recent times, particularly through the launch of the Blackphone.
The Blackphone, released to the public in June last year, is billed as a "surveillance-proof" gadget. The handset uses a custom Android operating system, features remote wiping tools and includes encrypted communication applications such as Silent Phone and Silent Text. According to The Washington Post, the company expects to have sold approximately two million Blackphones by the early months of this year. An accompanying secure tablet is currently being developed to pair with the Blackphone.
Conner said he was "honored and excited" to head the Silent Circle team, and as digital privacy and security have become a priority for today's enterprises, consumers and governments, the company has positioned itself well to fill a niche in the market for devices which cater for growing demand.
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