Darktrace appoints Chris Kozup as CMO

CAMBRIDGE, England – Cybersecurity AI provider Darktrace announced the appointment of Chris Kozup as its chief marketing officer, effective June 6, 2023.

Kozup, based in the U.S., will report to CEO Poppy Gustafsson. He comes to Darktrace from Zscaler, where he also served as the CMO and was responsible for global marketing strategy and execution for a team of hundreds of marketing and sales professionals. Darktrace said that Kozup has over two decades worth of experience leading high performing marketing initiatives and teams for enterprise technology companies with talents in product marketing, demand generation, digital marketing, cloud marketplaces, and brand strategy. An example of his leadership includes time spent at Cisco, HPE Aruba Networking, and Nutanix.

“Chris is an accomplished leader with proven experience leading high-performing marketing teams at fast-growing enterprise technology companies,” Gustafsson wrote. “I’m delighted to welcome Chris to the executive management team as we continue to strengthen and deepen our leadership in core areas and markets. Chris and the marketing team will play a pivotal role in guiding the brand and driving demand as we innovate on our AI and cyber security technologies and help businesses defend their most critical digital assets.”

“Organizations of all sizes continue to face the challenges of a growing number of cyber security threats - increasing in both frequency and complexity,” said Kozup. “Darktrace offers a truly unique approach to mitigating such risks by using the power of self-learning AI to better detect and remediate novel cyber security threats. I am excited to join this talented and growing team to further help existing and future customers safeguard their digital assets by harnessing the power of Darktrace’s Cyber AI technology.”

Kozup’s appointment follows another Darktrace acquisition in January with Denise Walter joining as Chief Revenue Officer.