IGEL appoints Simon Townsend & Jason Mafera as CTO for EMEA & CTO for North America

IGEL has announced the appointment of Simon Townsend as Field CTO for EMEA and Jason Mafera as Field CTO for North America. Both Townsend and Mafera will join IGEL's newly established Office of the CTO, which also includes Matthias Haas, IGEL's Chief Technology Officer.

"In establishing the Office of the CTO, one of our primary objectives is to optimise the experience our customers and partners have with IGEL through thought leadership on the future of end user computing and edge security, as well as a clear understanding of the unique challenges customers are facing in their local markets," says Matthias Haas, CTO, IGEL. 

"We are delighted to be elevating Simon to the role of Field CTO, and welcoming Jason to the IGEL team. Together they will become a force multiplier for our Sales and Customer Experience teams including our partner community as we continue to expand this office and establish a repeatable formula for customer success in all the regions we serve globally."

Prior to becoming Field CTO for EMEA, Simon served as IGEL's Chief Marketing Officer, overseeing field, Digital and Product Marketing functions. With more than 20 years of experience in the end-user computing market, Simon has helped manage Marketing, Product Marketing, Product Management and Global Systems Engineering for several enterprise software companies. 

He joined IGEL in 2018 from Ivanti where he was Chief Technologist and a member of the Office of the CTO. Before that, Simon spent more than a decade at AppSense where he served as the company's Vice President of Product Management. Simon is a frequent industry speaker, author and visionary on industry topics related to endpoint security, VDI, Citrix, Windows and DaaS.

Jason comes to IGEL with more than 20 years of experience in the delivery of cybersecurity-focused enterprise and SaaS solution offerings and has worked for a broad range of companies from start-ups and pre-IPO organisations to public and privately backed firms. 

Prior to joining IGEL in October 2022, Jason served as Head of Product and then Vice President of Sales Engineering and Customer Success for Tausight, an early-stage startup and provider of healthcare software focused on delivering real-time intelligence for securing and reducing compromise of electronic Personal Health Information (ePHI) at the edge.

Before that, he held a succession of leadership roles with digital identity provider and IGEL alliance partner, Imprivata. Jason spent 12 years at Imprivata, first defining and driving to market the OneSign Authentication Management and VDA solutions, then leading the Office of the CTO. Early on in his career, he was systems engineer and later product manager at RSA, The Security Division of EMC.

"I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to continue to serve IGEL, its customers and partners in the role of Field CTO for the EMEA region," says Townsend. 

"For me, this is really about returning to my roots and helping organisations successfully adopt technologies that will transform the employee experience, protect the organisation by simplifying management and security at the endpoint, all while helping them to align with the needs of today's modern, hybrid workplaces."

Mafera added, "Edge devices are where employees and end-users now interact with their business applications, data, and virtual resources. The evolving threat landscape, coupled with the increasing number of workloads shifting to the cloud, means that businesses must focus on identifying new and innovative ways to secure these edge access devices. IGEL solves this very real challenge faced by enterprises and SMBs, alike, by offering a proven solution for risk mitigation that reduces the attack surface through OS footprint minimisation, management, monitoring, and control at the endpoint. I'm excited to join IGEL as their North American Field CTO. I look forward to working with the leadership team to build out the Office of the CTO, and to also having a voice in guiding customers in making decisions today that will have a positive impact on their future success."