Chris Bates, Cissp
About Chris Bates, Cissp
Chris Bates is a senior cybersecurity executive with extensive experience developing and implementing security and business strategies for companies ranging from Series B start-ups to Fortune 100 corporations. A servant leader, Chris excels in building, scaling, transforming, and overseeing combined teams of up to 150 members across safety, security, IT, and data. He is a talented governance, operations, engineering, DevSecOps, and incident response leader who uses deep technical knowledge of security products and services to guide and transform industry-leading SaaS offerings. Throughout his career, Chris has built integrated intelligence functions with the NSA, FBI, CISA, CIA, and other friendly intelligence services, showcasing his ability to identify threats and solve complex challenges. Chris is an exceptional communicator who successfully conveys complex security concepts to non-technical stakeholders including boards of directors, and business strategy to technical teams. His open and direct communication style also makes him a sought-after panelist at security conferences. Chris’ expertise goes beyond technology. He has a profound understanding of sales, product development, messaging, and go-to-market strategies, and excels at managing globally dispersed teams. He currently sits on multiple company boards, including the SentinelOne Ventures Investment Board where he assesses potential venture capital investments. Key Accomplishments: • Built SentinelOne, as part of the executive leadership team, from 70 to 2.5K employees and grew business from Series B company with < $10M to $630M in annual recurring revenue, leading to largest cybersecurity IPO to date, raising $1.2B. • Vetted companies and performed due diligence before purchase by SentinelOne, successfully integrating staff, IT, business, and security into SentinelOne ecosystem, tools, and standards. • Served as a member of the investment board for S1 Ventures, SentinelOne’s venture funding arm. • Built, scaled, and led IT, Business Application, and Data teams at SentinelOne pre and post-IPO. • Redefined Extended Detection and Response (XDR) product, transforming security operations centers (SOC) by introducing real-time observability, automation, and threat modeling, setting new industry standard. Achieved context-based alerting in near real-time, with automation handling over 90% of alerts in near real-time. • Created and formalized the first business operations processes for Nike’s CISO office, ensuring efficient planning and oversight of budgets, resources, and board reporting.