About Us

As the SVP of Thales Cloud Protection & Licensing, Sébastien Cano leads a global business focused on helping organizations and the most respected brands in the world protect their most sensitive data, secure the cloud, and create more value for their software in the devices and services used by billions of consumers every day. He is responsible for the business and strategy for the company’s industry-leading data encryption, identity and access management, and software monetization solutions.

Over the past 20 years Sébastien has been proven global leader of high growth businesses in the highly competitive security, telecommunications and financial services industries. Previously, he served as EVP of Gemalto’s Enterprise & Cybersecurity business unit. He led the transformation of Gemalto into a leading provider of software, solutions and services to Fortune 500 Corporations. Sébastien has a master’s degree in Technology Management from Grenoble École de Management.

Moshe joined Imperva in 2018 as Data Security Vice President Engineering and has held a variety of leadership roles such as Israel Site leader and more. Prior to joining Imperva, Moshe was Vice President Engineering at Cellebrite, and held executive positions at Polycom.

Moshe earned Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Sciences from Bar-Ilan University and EMBA from The Hebrew University at JLM.

Poupak leads the global marketing strategy and execution for Thales Cloud Protection & Licensing with responsibility for digital, regional, and channel marketing as well as brand, communications, content strategy, thought leadership, and opportunity generation in support of the company’s industry-leading access management and data security portfolio.

She brings extensive digital security expertise, making data driven decisions to inform go-to-market strategy. Previously, Poupak served as Vice President of Americas Sales for Identity & Access Management at Thales. With nearly 20 years of marketing and sales experience across multiple data security technologies and regions, she brings a deep understanding and global perspective of how to help customers secure their cloud and digital transformation journey.

Michelle Forbrigger leads global human resources for Thales Cyber Security Products.

Michelle brings 25 years of international experience, most recently serving as Vice President of Human Resources, North America at Thales and leading successful initiatives to strengthen employee engagement and HR performance at the company. She has also held several other senior HR roles within the company, including Vice President Human Resources for Canada and Human Resources Director for the Transportation business.

Prior to joining Thales, Michelle worked at Alcatel Canada in the Transport Solutions Division. Michelle holds a B.B.A from Acadia University.

Eric Benson brings more than 25 years of experience in enterprise sales and management, including senior leadership positions at VMware and AWS. At the Cyber Security Products business of Thales, he is responsible for driving global sales revenue for the company’s industry-leading application security and data security products and services.

Benson is a recognized industry veteran in cloud computing. Prior to joining Thales, he was chief revenue officer at Matillion. Before that, Benson served as Vice President of Americas Cloud Sales at VMware, driving instrumental business model transformation in utility model computing and consumption. During his time there, Benson established partnerships with Microsoft and Google, and expanded the AWS partnership resulting in revenue growth from $60M to over $350M in his three years at VMware.

Prior to this, Benson spent more than 10 years at AWS in a variety of senior leadership roles including enterprise sales, business development, and served as chief of staff to the CRO.

Benson has a bachelor’s degree from Lewis & Clark College, and a Juris Doctor from Boston University School of Law.

Tim Chang is Global Vice President and General Manager of Application Security for the Cyber Security Products business line at Thales. In this role, Tim is responsible for leading the global product team and go to market strategy of the application security portfolio. Tim is a seasoned cyber security professional with a focus on staying at the forefront of the latest technologies and cyber security trends to enable customers and partners to defend against complex threats with effective, efficient and innovative application security solutions.

Prior to this role, Tim served as the Global Vice President of Sales Engineering at Imperva, where he led a team of experts responsible for driving the revenue growth of Imperva’s industry leading Web Application and API security solutions. Before Imperva, Tim was a team lead at HPE supporting the growth of HPE’s big data technologies and machine learning based information governance solutions. Tim is based in the U.S. and is a graduate of Stanford University.

Todd Moore is the head of the Data Security Products portfolio at Thales Cloud Protection & Licensing, where he drives the strategy for the company’s industry-leading data encryption portfolio. Moore is a respected cybersecurity professional with more than 20 years of experience helping enterprises protect their most sensitive data and applications. He is a growth leader who routinely develops business cases and market analysis for new product investments, demonstrates capability to develop competitive strategies, and builds teams from the ground up and negotiate strategic relationships and alliances.

Previously he was SVP for Encryption Products at Gemalto prior to its acquisition by Thales. Before that he was VP of Encryption products at SafeNet before its acquisition by Gemalto. Prior to that, he served as VP of Product Management for the Federal Market at SafeNet where he focused on high-speed link encryption, high assurance authentication, cross domain solutions, and cybersecurity. Todd holds a Master’s of Science in Electrical Engineering from Rochester Institute of Technology, a Bachelor’s of Science in Computer & Electrical Engineering from Cornell University, and a Bachelor’s of Art in Physics & Mathematics from Ithaca College.

Christine Draper is the head of Finance at Thales Cloud Protection & Licensing.

Lionel Merrien is VP of Strategy and Innovation for Thales Cloud Protection & Licensing. In this role, Lionel is guiding technology innovation and market analysis, channeling and validating business innovation, and coordinating the strategic business plan for the organization. His team also oversees strategic partnerships with major cloud providers and strategic go-to-market activities for new value propositions, such as transformation to SaaS offering and developing value propositions for new vertical markets.

Lionel has 25 years of expertise in developing and launching innovative solutions, with a strong focus on security. During his career he has been involved with nearly all aspects of the creation of new products, including technical consulting, development, product management, marketing, solution sales, and go-to-market. Prior to this position, Lionel led the Business Development activities of the business for 5 years, with the creation of strategy partnerships with major cloud players, and the launch of several innovative offerings. Lionel has a background in mechanical engineering from France and is based in Canada.

Ashvin Kamaraju drives the technology strategy for Thales Cyber Security Products, leading a global organization of researchers and technologists that develop the strategic vision for the company’s portfolio of industry-leading data protection products and services.

Previously Ashvin served as Vice President Global Engineering at Thales following its acquisition of Vormetric. He lead a geographically distributed engineering organization that developed a broad portfolio of leading edge data security products which met rigorous security standards and were designed for deployment in the enterprise, private and public clouds.

Ashvin is an experienced leader with a proven track record, having more than 25 years of software development experience with domain experience in storage management, operating systems, big data security, encryption and key management.

Prior to joining Vormetric, Ashvin spent four years as General Manager and Vice President of Engineering at Symantec Corporation, where he led the development of a portfolio of enterprise storage software products. Earlier in his career Ashvin worked at Sun Microsystems as a member of technical staff and engineering manager where he contributed to the Solaris operating system software for SPARCstations and led the development efforts for file and proxy cache servers. He has a MSCE and a master’s in mathematics and computer science from the University of Cincinnati.

Steve Walden is the Vice President of Global Business Operations for Thales Cyber Security Products. In this role, Steve is responsible for overseeing customer service, manufacturing, supply chain, order fulfillment, professional services, trade compliance and global facilities.

Steve is a highly experienced executive with a specific focus in business process improvement, quality assurance, and customer service. Prior to Thales, he was Vice President of Client Services for Gemalto’s Enterprise and Cybersecurity business. Before that he held several executive leadership roles in operations and client services at SafeNet prior to its acquisition by Gemalto. Prior to joining SafeNet, Steve held a series of executive positions at Ciena Corporation, including Vice President of Quality and Business Processes Improvement and Vice President of Global Network Services for the Americas.

Steve holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering Science as well as a Masters of Business Administration from Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland.

Raphaël de Cormis leads the integration of Imperva into Thales Group. Previously, Raphaël led the Thales Digital Factory. The Digital Factory’s mission is to drive Thales in a Digital era by delivering the cloud foundations to build and run digital services, unleashing business innovation in our ecosystems and growing talent and culture in a learning organization.

Prior to this role, Raphaël was VP Strategy & Innovation at Thales Digital Identity & Security, launching new businesses by investigating new technologies, usage trends and social impacts. He worked on Biometrics, Machine Learning in Cybersecurity, Self-sovereign Identity and SaaS integration (cloud or IoT).

He was previously GM Scandinavia for Gemalto and CTO of Netsize, acquired as its regulated mobile payment business line. He had worked in various tech companies in France and the US, such as STMicroelectronics and Idemia, as well as for an NGO in Madagascar. He has also been appointed expert to the Justice Directorate of the European Commission and is chairing the Center for Responsible Digital Identity created with Institut Polytechnique and Telecom Paristech.

James Muse leads the global legal and compliance function for the Cloud Protection & licensing business at Thales.

Prior, he held senior leadership positions at Imperva and in-house in the City of London, having also worked for Pinsent Masons and Allen & Overy. He is known for his commercial and pragmatic approach, which is based on 20+ years of experience running large teams, projects and budgets, and advising boards.