Rackspace Fills Vacant Chief Security Officer Slot

There's a new sheriff in town at Rackspace.

The San Antonio-based cloud provider hired Brian Kelly, a former lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force and an executive with three decades of experience overseeing security strategy and technology governance, to serve as the company's chief security officer.

Kelly will oversee the cyber security of computing clusters and the physical security of the company's data centers.

[ Related: Rackspace To Remain Independent, Names CEO]

Those duties include application security, platform security, information security, network perimeter defense and security, physical security and incident management. The new CSO will also be responsible for companywide security training and running Rackspace's security operations center.

Kelly comes to Rackspace after an 11-year stint as executive director of Ernst and Young's security and forensics programs. For three years, he was also director of that multinational company's fraud investigations unit, according to his LinkedIn profile.

"As a senior executive in Ernst & Young’s Security, Risk and Assurance practice, Kelly led global advisory services including enterprise risk and compliance, standards assessments, data protection and program development and fraud investigation and electronic evidence collection," according to a prepared statement from Rackspace.

Kelly served as CEO of iDefense, a company later acquired by VeriSign, between 2000 and 2003.

Before that, as a manager at Deloitte & Touche, he advised clients on comprehensive security and risk assessment, technology strategy, incident response and served as the interim corporate information security officer, according to Rackspace.

Rackspace's previous CSO left the company more than a year ago. Mark Roenigk, the company's COO, had been acting in the position while he searched for a successor. Kelly will report to Roenigk.

Kelly has a bachelor's degree from the U.S. Air Force Academy, an MBA from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a master's from the Air Force Institute of Technology.

"Brian Kelly will be a strong addition to our leadership team as we collaborate with customers to address the growing cyber security challenges in today’s world," Roenigk said in a prepared statement.

PUBLISHED OCT. 9, 2014