Bugcrowd is excited to welcome Braden Russell as the company’s first-ever Chief Product Officer. Braden is a trusted cybersecurity leader with 20 years of experience in scaling large SaaS platforms to hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue. His role here will help support our vision to scale Bugcrowd’s business through organic R&D growth and strategic M&A integration projects.
Braden’s expert technical background combines several related cyber disciplines including Vulnerability Management, Risk and Compliance, Advanced Endpoint Protection, Cloud Security, and Digital Commerce. Most recently he served as CTO of the Falcon Platform and Next-Gen SIEM at CrowdStrike, overseeing the vision and strategy for the first Security Cloud.
Prior to Crowdstrike, Braden held leadership positions at Foundstone, McAfee, Intel Security, and Cylance, where he was the founding SVP of Product Development and Engineering. At Cylance, he built the teams and technologies for all Cylance products, including the award-winning CylancePROTECT, the first Next-Gen Antivirus (NGAV).
Braden holds patents in advanced techniques for automated vulnerability discovery and intelligent malware detection. Before entering cybersecurity, he was part of the Advanced Digital Systems Group at Sony Pictures Studios, where his team was awarded a Technical Academy Award in 2000.
In his new role as Chief Product Officer for Bugcrowd, Braden will take responsibility for all R&D groups within the company, including Product, Engineering, Infrastructure, and Data Science. As CPO, he will report directly to CEO Dave Gerry.
“As I’ve gotten to know Braden over the past few months, I’ve been continually impressed by his experience, thoughtfulness, and strong cultural fit,” said Dave Gerry, CEO of Bugcrowd. “We are fortunate to have an executive of Braden Russell’s caliber joining our leadership team as CPO.”
Braden earned an MBA from Pepperdine University and a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Irvine. He lives in Southern California with his wife and five sons.
“I am honored to join the Bugcrowd team and apply my career experience in building next-generation technologies from the ground-up,” said Braden Russell. “Bugcrowd nurtures a truly dynamic organizational culture that attracted me for this opportunity to create innovative products that solve real business problems at scale.”
Please join us in giving Braden Russell a warm reception as Bugcrowd’s new Chief Product Officer: Welcome aboard Braden, and as we like to say here, build it like you own it!
Executive Q&A with CPO Braden Russell
What drew you to join the Bugcrowd Team?
We are rapidly advancing into the era of Artificial Intelligence, with AI even recently passing the Turing test. While AI plays a crucial role in automating security against malicious actors, I believe that human ingenuity remains irreplaceable. Bugcrowd, the leader in crowdsourced security, has developed an incredible platform that combines the unmatched creativity and problem-solving skills of the Crowd with cutting-edge automation and AI. This combination delivers a level of security that customers have never experienced before. I’m thrilled to join the team and contribute to further developing and expanding this platform.
What piece of advice would you give to professionals who aspire to a career in cybersecurity leadership?
One valuable piece of advice I received early in my security career is to always remember that our true battle isn’t against the competition; it’s against the adversary. As a cybersecurity leader, your primary responsibility is to stay one step ahead of attackers. If you can create products that offer protection levels that your competitors can’t match, you’ll succeed in the market. Focus on leading your teams to deliver the best possible security, and the market will recognize and reward your efforts.
Based on your extensive industry background, what’s one valuable lesson that you can share from building creative product teams and high-performing engineering teams?
Always prioritize the customer. In cybersecurity, moving quickly is essential to staying ahead of attackers, but it also means that mistakes will inevitably happen. Adversaries adapt rapidly, with their tools and techniques evolving almost overnight. While the phrase “move fast and break things” is often touted, it’s crucial that we build safeguards to protect our customers when things do break. I’ve seen customers bear the consequences at every cybersecurity company I’ve worked for. We can’t afford to slow down, but we can ensure that the customer remains at the forefront of every decision we make. As a mentor of mine once said, “put the customer first, and everything else will fall into place.”
