BlackBerry Hires McAfee Vet as Cybersecurity Business Unit President

McAfee and AVG Technologies vet John Giamatteo is joining BlackBerry as president of the company’s cybersecurity business unit.

BlackBerry’s John Giamatteo

In addition, Tom Eacobacci, BlackBerry’s president and COO, will exit the company on Oct. 29. Giamatteo joins BlackBerry on Oct. 4.

John Chen is BlackBerry‘s executive chairman and CEO. He announced Giamatteo’s hiring when BlackBerry reported its second-quarter earnings on Wednesday.

“We are already seeing benefits from establishing the two key business units and are delighted to appoint John Giamatteo as president of cybersecurity,” he said. “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 cybersecurity, we received strong third-party validation of the effectiveness of our artificial intelligence (AI)-driven, prevention-first suite of products, illustrating progress made with recent product launches.”

Double-Digit Growth at McAfee

During his six years as McAfee‘s president and chief revenue officer, Giamatteo delivered “both double-digit growth, and margin expansion for the enterprise, SMB and consumer divisions,” BlackBerry said.

“His appointment completes the refocus of our software business into two business units,” it said. “John will build on the progress we made in recent quarters with the cybersecurity business unit and will be responsible for strategy, engineering and go to market, which includes our channel and ISV partners.”

Before joining McAfee, Giamatteo served as COO at AVG, Solera and Real Networks. At AVG, he developed the company’s financial management strategy and contributed to the development of its strategic goals. Key business areas included platform, sales, marketing, operations, web, business governance and technology.

Prior to those stints, Giamatteo was president and CEO of Nortel Networks Asia Pacific.

For its second quarter, BlackBerry reported:

• Total revenue of $175 million.
• IoT revenue of $40 million.
• Cybersecurity revenue of $120 million.
• Licensing and other revenue of $15 million.