Deep Instinct appoints new channel chief for the Americas

Prevention-first cyber security provider Deep Instinct has announced the appointment of Jim Ortbals as its new vice president of Americas channels, while Ryan Vaupel joins as vice president of operations.

As channel lead for the Americas, Ortbals will focus on driving adoption of the platform via the company’s Stratosphere Partner Program, supporting existing partners, and striking up new relationships. 

He joins the company from Zscaler, where he led the firm’s global service provider, MSSP, and distribution routes to market, working with many of its top partners around the world. 

Prior to that, he held various global channel and field sales leadership positions at industry multinationals such as VMware and Cisco, as well as late-stage startups such as Zerto.

In an announcement, Ortbals said Deep Instinct’s channel partners and customers are “looking for innovation in cyber security” as opposed to more detection and response.

“The Deep Instinct Stratosphere Partner Program is bringing predictive prevention to our partners to lower risk for customers around the globe and the demand is growing,” he said. 

“My focus is to develop our partner ecosystem and ensure they have the right tools and solutions to be successful.”

Ryan Vaupel also joins the business as vice president of operations, tasked with “laying the foundation for operation excellence,” Deep Instinct said.

With almost two decades of executive-level experience, Vaupel most recently served as senior vice president of global operations at ZIMPERIUM and held a similar leadership role at Zerto. 

Deep Instinct said the appointment will add a combination of technology, enterprise sales, leadership, transformation, and operations expertise to the company.

“The status quo reactionary security model is failing to stop zero-day, ransomware, and other unknown threats until after they are already inside an organization,” Vaupel said. 

“Deep Instinct’s prevention platform provides organizations with a proactive security model that prevents threats before they can execute in an environment.

“I look forward to driving our organization at maximum operating efficiency to ensure we delight our customers, partners, and employees.”

Commenting on the appointments, Deep Instinct CEO Lane Bess said the industry is at a “tipping point” with the rise of generative AI promising to “broadly increase not only the velocity of attacks but also severity”.

“It is a wakeup call for organizations to focus their attention on prevention and the only way we get there is with the most sophisticated form of AI – deep learning,” Bess added. “Jim and Ryan will both play an integral role for Deep Instinct during this time of immense growth.”