Alex Stamos | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Stamos in 2018 | |
| Born | 1979 (age 46–47) |
| Occupation | Chief security officer |
| Spouse | Katie Stamos |
| Children | 3 |
Alex Stamos (born 1979) is a Greek-American[1]cybersecurity expert and business executive who works on improving the security and safety of the Internet.[2]
He is thechief security officer at Corridor[3] and a lecturer atStanford University.[2] Prior to this, he was the chief security officer atFacebook andYahoo, the co-founder of iSEC Partners, and the founder of theStanford Internet Observatory.[2]
He departed from Facebook following disagreement with other executives about how to address the Russian government's use of its platform to spread disinformation during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.[4]
Born in 1979, Stamos grew up inFair Oaks, California and graduated fromBella Vista High School in 1997.[5] Stamos attended theUniversity of California, Berkeley, where he graduated in 2001 with a degree inEECS.[6]
Stamos began his career atLoudcloud and, later, as a security consultant at@stake.[7]
In 2004, Stamos co-founded iSEC Partners, a security consulting firm,[8] with Joel Wallenstrom, Himanshu Dwivedi, Jesse Burns and Scott Stender. During his time at iSEC Partners, Stamos was well known for his research publications on vulnerabilities inforensics software[9] andMacOS,[10]Operation Aurora,[11] andsecurity ethics in the post-Snowden era.[12]
Stamos was an expert witness for a number of cases involving digital privacy, encryption, and free speech:
iSEC Partners was acquired byNCC Group in 2010.[17]
Following the acquisition of iSEC Partners by NCC Group, Stamos became theCTO of Artemis Internet, an internal startup at NCC Group. Artemis Internet petitionedICANN to host a '.secure'gTLD on which all services would be required to meet minimum security standards.[18] Artemis ultimately acquired the right to operate the '.trust' gTLD fromDeutsche Post to launch its services.[19] Stamos filed and received five patents for his work at Artemis Internet.[20]
In 2014, Stamos joined Yahoo! as chief security officer.[21] While at Yahoo!, he testified to Congress ononline advertising and its impact on computer security and data privacy.[22] He publicly challengedNSA DirectorMichael S. Rogers on the subject of encryption backdoors in February 2015 at a cybersecurity conference hosted byNew America.[23][24]
In June 2015, Alex Stamos resigned from Yahoo, when Yahoo's Chief Executive Marissa Mayer's decided to obey a classified U.S. government demand, scanning Yahoo Mail accounts on behalf of the National Security Agency or FBI.[25]
In 2015, Stamos joined Facebook as chief security officer. During his time at Facebook, Stamos co-authored a whitepaper (with Jen Weedon and Will Nuland) on the use of social media to attack elections.[26] He later delivered a keynote address at theBlack Hat Briefings in 2017 on the need to broaden the definition of security and diversify the cybersecurity industry.[27]
In reviewing the ads buys, we have found approximately $100,000 in ad spending from June of 2015 to May of 2017 — associated with roughly 3,000 ads — that was connected to about 470 inauthentic accounts and Pages in violation of our policies. Our analysis suggests these accounts and Pages were affiliated with one another and likely operated out of Russia.
— Alex Stamos, September 6, 2017,[28]
Following disagreement with other executives about how to address the Russian government's use of its platform to spread disinformation during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, he made plans in 2018 to leave the company[4] to take a research professorship atStanford University.[29]
Stamos was interviewed about theRussian interference in the 2016 United States elections in the PBS Frontline documentaryThe Facebook Dilemma.[30][31]
During Stamos's tenure as the chief security officer, Facebook was involved in numerous safety and security controversies including theRussian interference in the 2016 United States elections, failure to remove reported child-abuse images,[32] inaction against disinformation campaigns in Philippines that targeted and harassed journalists,[33][34]Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal and theRohingya genocide, for which the company has played a "determining role" according to the UN.[35]Stamos said, as the chief security officer during the 2016 election season he "deserve as much blame (or more) as any other exec at the company," for Facebook's failed response to the Russian interference.[36]Although the whitepaper Stamos coauthored[26]only mentioned $100,000 ad spend for 3,000 ads connected to about 470 inauthentic accounts, it was later revealed thatthe Russian influence had reached 126 million Facebook users.[37]While Cambridge Analytica harvested data from 87 million Facebook users before Stamos's tenure, Facebook did not notify its users until 2018, despite knowing about it as early as 2015, the year Stamos joined the company as the chief security officer.[38] In July 2019, Facebook agreed to pay $100 million to settle with theU.S. Securities and Exchange Commissionfor misleading investors for more than two years (2015-2018) about the misuse of its users' data.[39]
As of August 2019[update], Stanford University'sCenter for International Security and Cooperation lists Stamos as anadjunct professor, visiting scholar at theHoover Institution, and director of theStanford Internet Observatory.[40][41]
At the beginning of 2021, Stamos joined formerCISAdirectorChris Krebs to form Krebs Stamos Group, a cybersecurity consultancy, which quickly landed its first customer, the recently beleagueredSolarWinds.[42][43][44]
In late 2023,SentinelOne, a cybersecurity firm, acquired the Krebs Stamos group; and Alex Stamos joined SentinelOne as Chief Trust Officer.[45]
As of 2025, Stamos is the chief security officer at Corridor, an AI security startup co-founded byJack Cable.[3]
SolarWinds Corp. has tapped prominent security experts Chris Krebs and Alex Stamos to review its practices after suspected Russian hackers compromised the company's software and conducted a sprawling hack across the U.S. government and private sector. The contract with SolarWinds is the first for a newly formed venture Krebs and Stamos have created together. The Krebs Stamos Group will advise clients on cybersecurity, with a focus on areas including foreign threats and crisis situations. The group will work toward 'national and economic security,' Krebs said in a statement Friday.
SolarWinds has hired two of the biggest names in cybersecurity, following the gigantic breach, which meant it acted as the gateway for hackers to penetrate US government systems. SolarWinds announced on Thursday it was retaining a new security consulting business founded by Chris Krebs, a former Homeland Security cybersecurity official, and ex-Facebook security chief and Stanford University professor Alex Stamos.
Former U.S. cybersecurity official Chris Krebs and former Facebook chief security officer Alex Stamos have founded a new cybersecurity consultancy firm, which already has its first client: SolarWinds. The two have been hired as consultants to help the Texas-based software maker recover from a devastating breach by suspected Russian hackers. Krebs was one of the most senior cybersecurity officials in the U.S. government, most recently serving as the director of Homeland Security's CISA cybersecurity advisory agency from 2018, until he was fired by President Trump for his efforts to debunk false election claims — many of which came from the president himself. Stamos, meanwhile, joined the Stanford Internet Observatory after holding senior cybersecurity positions at Facebook and Yahoo. He also consulted for Zoom amid a spate of security problems.
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