Rackspace Names Director of Managed Security for EMEA Region

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Rackspace has named Dee Richartz director of its Managed Security Services business unit for EMEA to drive technical strategy and product management in the region, according to an announcement on Tuesday.

The addition of Richartz reflects the company’s ongoing commitment to building out its managed security expertise, Rackspace says.

She will lead her team in the development of tailored support to help protect customer IT environments from advanced persistent threats.

The appointment of Richartz comes as Rackspace has added a new president, Jeff Cotten, to lighten the load of Rackspace CEO Taylor Rhodes, who has acted as both CEO and president since 2014. Cotten’s responsibilities include growing Rackspace’s international business as well as its managed security services business, which he identified in an interview last month as one of the company’s biggest opportunities.

Richartz brings over 10 years of security product management and solutions engineering to Rackspace, including most recently as Director of Technology Alliances for Verisign. Prior to Verisign, Richartz helped bring security products and services to market and guided enterprise customers in the design and deployment of global networking and security solutions for major European telecommunication and network providers.

“Cyber security is clearly one of the biggest challenges that businesses of all sizes face today, so I’m very proud to help bring our cyber defense portfolio to market,” Richartz said in a statement. “With attacks today being much more targeted and difficult to detect than ever before, customers are faced with the mammoth task of keeping up their defenses amidst new technologies flooding the market on a daily basis. Rackspace has the expertise to guide organizations through this often confusing position to implementing a security solution that helps provide a comprehensive defense on top of the organization’s favored cloud platform.”  

Rackspace’s U.K. office is building out its Customer Security Operations Center (CSOC) in 2017, which will support its U.S. CSOC. The company will also open a Munich office this year, as its operations in the region expand.