.secure applicant loses CTO to Yahoo!
Yahoo has reportedly hired a new chief information security officer in the form of Alex Stamos, outspoken CTO of .secure new gTLD applicant Artemis Internet.
The news of Stamos’ departure was first reported by Re/code, citing unnamed sources, a week ago.
Stamos did not respond to a DI request for comment but I gather he’s been flagging up his departure from Artemis on ICANN mailing lists.
According to Re/code, he’s going to be Yahoo’s first CISO for a year.
Stamos’ departure will be a blow for Artemis, which is owned by escrow provide NCC Group. He has been, I think, I pretty good front man for the company over the last couple of years.
I also wonder whether he sensed which way the wind is blowing in the .secure contention set, in which Artemis is in a two-horse race with the much wealthier Amazon.
NCC also recently bought the .trust application from Deutsche Post, which looked a bit to me like a backup plan.
Professor Alex Stamos is a very smart man – not just because he’s Greek – but because he’s been the driving force behind Artemis for a while.
I thought he was American.