After breach, Twitter hires a new cybersecurity chief

Following a high-profile breach in July, Twitter has hired Rinki Sethi as its new chief information security officer.

Sethi most recently served as chief information security officer at cloud data management company Rubrik, and previously worked in cybersecurity roles at IBM, Palo Alto Networks and Intuit.

In the new role at Twitter overseeing the company’s information security practices and policies, Sethi will report to platform lead Nick Tornow, according to her tweet announcing the job move.

So excited to be a part of the team @twitter working alongside @nicktornow @michaelmontano @paraga and more! https://t.co/SGoBLr5957

— Rinki Sethi (@rinkisethi) September 28, 2020

Sethi also serves as an advisor to several startups, including LevelOps and Authomize, and cybersecurity organizations, including Women in Cybersecurity.

Twitter had left the role of chief information security officer vacant since the departure of its previous security chief, Mike Convertino, who left in December to join cyber resilience firm Arceo.

In July, the company was hit by a very public cyberattack on the company’s internal “admin” tools that played out on the social media platform in real time, as hackers hijacked high-profile Twitter accounts to spread a cryptocurrency scam. The hackers used voice phishing, a social engineering technique that involves tricking someone on the phone to hand over passwords or access to internal systems.

Earlier this month, the company said it bolstered its security following the attack, including rolling out security keys, which makes the kind of attack that targeted Twitter far more difficult.

A hacker used Twitter’s own ‘admin’ tool to spread cryptocurrency scam