Johannesburg, 23 Jan 2024
IT security industry veteran Christi Maherry has been appointed co-CEO of Snode Technologies to work with founder and co-CEO Nithen Naidoo to scale the business internationally.
Maherry, former CEO and founder of specialist application security provider LAWtrust, has over 25 years of experience in the local and international IT security sector. She started her career in counter-intelligence and surveillance in 1997.
She says the move to Snode takes her full circle back to the intelligence arena. “Snode harnesses intelligence to develop innovative and pioneering solutions. Several Snode solutions are so far ahead of the curve that in recent Gartner publications, our core solution and accompanying Threat & Exposure Management programs are considered emerging trends for 2025 and 2026. Snode is an inspiring company,” she says.
“At the heart of our technology, we leverage advanced mathematical algorithms and machine learning to process dynamic data of any format and scale in real time. This delivers industry-leading performance in allowing analysts on our platform to detect prevailing patterns not visible to the human eye, along with interactive risk visualisation, behavioural-based pattern recognition, and predictive analytics. Apart from our defensive work, we also leverage our technology, computer scientists, and security experts to track adversaries and provide intelligence in criminal investigations,” she says.
Snode has grown 40% yearly and won international awards for its solutions, developed locally to address local customer needs. The company now monitors over 5.5 million client digital assets on four continents.
Maherry says it is worth noting that a team of engineers has primarily driven the company’s growth. “My main role will be marketing and business development to support continued growth, scaling market share internationally, helping to build a more profitable business and creating more jobs. We are putting systems in place to go from a 50-strong team to a 200-people company globally over the next three years,” she says.
The expansion will include recruiting some sales and support staff focusing on women and young South Africans and on growing existing channel capacity. Snode is also interfacing with tertiary institutions to grow cyber skills locally and offer an opportunity for them to build a career aligned to the Snode values and methodologies.
World-class technology
Maherry says Snode’s solutions extend beyond homegrown technologies, focusing more on Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR), analytics and AI, and increasingly advanced deception technology. "Our cyber engineers and analysts team augment our partners' and clients' teams to continue managing their threat exposure with our flagship technology solution," she says.
She notes that Snode and several of its South African peers are helping make South Africa’s mark globally. “The South African cyber security industry is particularly innovative and offers world-class technology. Several local companies are growing strongly and going global,” she says.
As a proud South African, Maherry is confident in Snode’s potential to become a dominant market player internationally. “Snode stays ahead of cyber defence trends and has won several international awards for its solutions. Our compromise assessment and Risk-Based Threat Management technology, which has been in the market for several years, is starting to emerge as a top technology category. And because we are privately owned, we don’t have government connections or intelligence back doors, so Snode is uniquely positioned to focus on international defence and intelligence agencies.”
Maherry says Snode’s values align with hers in areas such as authenticity, integrity, innovation, and deep tech. She says that over and above its strong business growth, Snode also works to make a difference. “I have been involved in an organisation that works to combat human trafficking, while Snode also sometimes assists law enforcement in kidnapping and trafficking cases. Snode’s mission – to ‘defend as one’ – resonates with me because I’m a team player too,” she says.
Maherry and members of the Snode team will participate in the upcoming ITWeb Security Summit 2024, in the radio booth and hackathon. “ITWeb Security Summit is still the biggest IT security conference in South Africa, and I believe everyone should be there,” she says.
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