Levy has been acting CEO since Feb. 15. To drive a critical role in the execution of his strategy to shape the future of Sophos, Levy has named Jim Dildine Sophos’ new chief financial officer (CFO) and a member of his senior management team.

Levy is a nearly 30-year veteran of innovating and leading cybersecurity product development, services and companies.

During his nine-year tenure at Sophos, Levy drove the transformation of Sophos from a product-only vendor into the global cybersecurity giant it is today, including an incident response team and managed detection and response (MDR) service that defends more than 21,000 organizations worldwide.

Levy also created SophosAI and Sophos X-Ops, an operational threat intelligence unit that joins together more than 500 cross-departmental cybersecurity operators and threat intelligence experts.

Sophos X-Ops shares real-time and historical attack data with all of Sophos’ solutions, making them smarter and faster at defending customers from persistent cyberattacks.

Levy has in-depth experience working with the channel, including managed security providers (MSPs), throughout his career, which he started in the mid-1990s as a cybersecurity practitioner and product and service innovator at a value-added reseller.

As CEO, Levy plans to expand Sophos’ already strong customer base in the midmarket, which includes nearly 600,000 customers worldwide and generates more than $1.2 billion in annual revenue.

As a leading provider of cybersecurity solutions for the midmarket, Sophos has a unique ability to further scale its business and the business of its partners by helping organizations in dire need of basic and expanded defenses against opportunistic and targeted cyberattacks.

These organizations include the critical substrate, small- to mid-sized organizations that comprise the machines of the world’s economy and are just as susceptible to cyberattacks as major corporations.

In fact, the critical substrate, including smaller organizations within the classic 16 critical infrastructure verticals, are prime attacker targets, as evidenced by Sophos’ Active Adversary report and 2024 Threat Report. Both intelligence reports reveal how attackers are repeatedly abusing exposed Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) access at midmarket organizations, as well as going after them for data theft, spying, ransomware payoffs, or supply chain attacks to gain entry to bigger prey.

“When midmarket organizations – the global critical substrate – are paralyzed due to ransomware or other cyberattacks, business activities linked in our supply chains also stagnate, slowing our economy down. Operations of all sizes and shapes suffer collateral damage when dependencies in their supply chains are attacked. This can be devastating in often unpredictable ways because of the increasing complexity of how the modern industrialized global economy works,” said Levy. “Our goal is to help more organizations in the midmarket – the estimated 99% of organizations that are below the cybersecurity poverty line – be better at detecting and disrupting inevitable cyberattacks. Our envisioned approach to achieving this is to work with MSPs and channel partners that can scale alongside us with our innovative critical cross domain technologies – endpoint, network, email, and cloud security – and managed services that they can resell and co-deliver. Cyberattacks against the midmarket could severely impact the world’s ability to function; they are relatively under-protected compared to the 1%, and Sophos is on a mission to change that.”

Levy’s leadership strategy includes adding Dildine as CFO to help Sophos reach its business goals and propel the company on its future growth trajectory. He brings exceptional operational expertise to Sophos, as well as a strong background in channel partner-based cybersecurity business.

Dildine joins Sophos most recently from cybersecurity software and services company, Imperva, where he was CFO for more than four years.

Before Imperva, Dildine was CFO for Symantec’s $2.5 billion enterprise security business unit for three years.

Dildine also previously held key financial leadership roles for nearly nine years at Blue Coat Systems, where Levy also served as chief technology officer.

While at Blue Coat Systems, he oversaw a dramatic growth in market value while guiding the company to a go-private transaction by Thoma Bravo, sale from Thoma Bravo to Bain Capital, and subsequent sale to Symantec for $4.6 billion in 2016.

Dildine also spearheaded the acquisition and seamless integration of six security-focused companies, which were valued at more than $750 million during his tenure.

“Having worked in technology and finance for more than 30 years, it is exciting to join Sophos at this juncture, when the company is well on its way to breaking through to the next level. Everything the company has accomplished thus far is impressive, including how dedicated Sophos is to constantly be innovating its cybersecurity technology and managed security services for customers in the midmarket. Sophos is also equally committed to supporting its channel partners, MSPs, and staff around the world,” said Dildine. “I am looking forward to helping Joe accelerate growth and further position Sophos as a leader in the industry.”

“Thoma Bravo has worked with Joe through successful investments in SonicWall and Blue Coat Systems, and our relationship and experience together, coupled with his authentic style of leadership and impeccable reputation across the cybersecurity industry, make him the ideal CEO to lead this next chapter at Sophos,” said Chip Virnig, a partner at Thoma Bravo and a Sophos board member. “We’re also excited that Jim is joining Sophos as CFO and is a member of Joe’s senior management team. We’ve worked with Joe and Jim at various companies for well over a decade, and we’re confident their combined expertise will reap big rewards for the future of Sophos.”

Sophos, a global leader in innovating and delivering cybersecurity as a service, has announced the promotion of Joe Levy to president of the Sophos Technology Group (STG). Sophos also appointed Bill Robbins president, Worldwide Field Operations. 

Levy is currently Sophos’ chief technology officer and chief product officer, and will retain these titles and the organizational structure of STG.

As president, Levy will continue expanding Sophos as a leading global cybersecurity as a service provider, driven by its fast-growing Sophos Managed Detection and Response (MDR) and Incident Response (IR) services and a more than $1 billion product portfolio that spans endpoint, network, email, and cloud security. Sophos MDR is the fastest growing detection and response service worldwide, supporting more than 15,500 customers.

STG also includes Sophos X-Ops, a cross-operational threat and cybersecurity intelligence team of more than 500 experts. Levy will continue to report to Sophos Chief Executive Officer Kris Hagerman.

“Joe and his team continue to set new standards for both the pace and the quality of innovation as our technology teams deliver world-class protection, detection and response for our customers, and provide a strong technical foundation to support Sophos’ long-term success,” said Hagerman. “Our product strategy, our technology delivery execution and our future technology roadmaps have never been stronger as a result of Joe’s ambition, vision and guidance as a leader at Sophos.”

As head of worldwide field operations, Robbins will oversee all aspects of global sales with a continued priority on the channel ecosystem, including helping partners grow their business with Sophos’ MDR and IR services and security product solutions.

Robbins will also lead customer support and develop and direct Sophos’ new customer success program. Prior to joining Sophos, Robbins was chief revenue officer and executive vice president at Mandiant, Inc., and FireEye prior to its divestiture, for six years. Before that, Robbins was executive vice president of worldwide sales and corporate marketing at Nuance Communications.

He also held several executive level sales positions at Symantec, including executive vice president of worldwide sales, and served as vice president at Veritas software, which Symantec acquired. Robbins will join Sophos’ senior management team and report to Hagerman.

“Bill has a proven and highly-successful track record leading worldwide sales operations, building channel partnerships and developing customer success programs within the cybersecurity industry. Specifically, his experience at top security and threat intelligence providers across both products and services is a great fit for Sophos as we look to continue to scale and expand our business,” said Hagerman. “Bill takes to heart the idea that our customers’ business security is in our hands. This approach will further accelerate our cybersecurity as a service delivery to the mid-market through Managed Service Partners (MSPs) and to larger organizations needing to enhance their security with Sophos’ expertise. We’re thrilled to have Bill join the Sophos team at this exciting time.”