BlackBerry has appointed John Giamatteo from McAfee as President of the Cyber Security

• Giamatteo will join the firm on October 4 and oversee business unit strategy, engineering, and go-to-market. He will report to BlackBerry’s Executive Chairman and CEO John Chen.
• Additionally, Blackberry’s President/Chief Operating Officer Tom Eacobacci is leaving the company to pursue other opportunities as of Oct. 29.

The executive moves come at a key time for BlackBerry and the company’s MSSP partners. BlackBerry’s Cyber Security revenue for the second quarter of fiscal 2022 was $120 million, with gross margin of 59% and ARR (annualized recurring revenue) of $364 million, the company announced today. Much of the cyber revenue involves continued R&D plus the Cylance acquisition, which was finalized in 2019.

The cyber revenues beat BlackBerry’s expectations, CEO John Chen said in a prepared statement. Still, competition remains intense — particularly as CrowdStrike and SentinelOne gain endpoint protection traction with a growing number of MSPs and MSSPs, according to our Top 250 MSSPs research report for 2021.

In a prepared statement about the career move, Giamatteo said:

“I’m excited to be joining BlackBerry and to be leading the Cyber Security business unit.  Never has the threat of cyberattacks been higher, nor more in the minds of management. BlackBerry’s AI-driven, prevention-first technology is well placed to scale to meet the constantly evolving cybersecurity needs of companies everywhere.  I’m very positive about the opportunities that we have as a company.”

In a prepared statement about the quarterly results and executive moves, Chen said:

“Revenue for all businesses beat expectations this quarter.  The Cyber Security business unit delivered robust sequential billings and revenue growth and the IoT business unit performed well in the face of global chip shortage pressures. We are already seeing benefits from establishing the two key business units and are delighted to appoint John Giamatteo as President of Cyber Security.  Giamatteo, who was previously President and Chief Revenue Officer at McAfee, adds leading industry expertise. In IoT, design activity for our QNX products remains very strong, demonstrating both our industry leadership position and secular trends, such as ECU consolidation. In Cyber Security we received strong third-party validation of the effectiveness of our AI-driven, prevention-first suite of products, illustrating progress made with recent product launches.”