Management Team
Rob Cheyne, Chief Executive Officer
As CEO, Rob is responsible for maintaining the company vision, managing the executive team, business development, and recruiting. Rob has cultivated a broad range of skills and experience during his 17 years of experience in the information technology field. He has significant expertise in business and e-Commerce systems, systems integration, software development, and information security. He has developed and taught information security training classes to thousands of students in some of the largest corporations in the world.
Rob has been working in the information security industry since 1998. The first security company he worked for was Internet Security Advantages (ISA). During his time at ISA, Rob lead a team that deployed a full-scale Public Key Infrastructure at a leading state health care organization.
After ISA, Rob was one of the founding employees of @stake, a leading pioneer in information security consulting. During his tenure at @stake, Rob wore many hats and embraced a broad range of skills and responsibilities. He helped develop application security assessment methodologies that are still in use today and led @stake’s Application Security Center of Excellence for two years. He led and conducted secure architecture and design reviews, secure code reviews, application penetration tests, and various types of specialized security audits for Fortune 500 companies.
Rob was the author of LC4, a version of the award-winning L0phtCrack password auditing software and he worked on @stake’s SmartRisk Analyzer team, which was eventually spun off as a company called Veracode. @stake was acquired by Symantec Corporation in October 2004.
Paul Hinkle, Chief Technical Officer
As CTO, Paul is responsible for security research, course design, course development, and Information Technology. Paul is an Information Security Professional with 14 years experience in application development and information security. Paul brings a passion and talent for communicating his security expertise to employees across all levels of an organization.
Prior to Safelight, Paul joined Symantec as part of the @stake acquisition. In the role of Principal Security instructor, he helped build education offerings in secure application development, the management of the secure development lifecycle and infrastructure security. Paul has partnered with leading clients in the financial industry and in government and has delivered training in information security concepts to approximately 5,000 IT professionals.
Paul recently published an article in Information Systems Security called Mitigating IT Risks with Security Education and Training.
Prior to @stake, Paul developed his training skills at WebMethods, a leading Web Services Infrastructure company. He also worked as a consultant for Inventa and a software systems designer for NetResponse, where he gained significant expertise in all phases of the software development lifecycle.
Michael Maziarz, Chief Operating Officer
As COO, Mike is responsible for sales, marketing, finance, and product development for Safelight Security Advisors. Mike brings 17 years of technology and management experience to the team with experience spanning all phases of software development and marketing.
Mike most recently worked as director of marketing at Novell. In his position at Novell, he was responsible for competitive intelligence, market research, and product launch management globally. Mike began his career at Computer Sciences Corporation where he spent six years consulting in Financial Services, Retail, and Healthcare accounts. After CSC Consulting, he held roles in Logistics.com (now Manhattan Associates) and Collaborative Consulting where he was a Sr. Project Manager out of the Boston office.
Mike holds an MBA from Babson and a BA in Economics from Stonehill College.
Robert Teixeira, Chief Financial Officer
As CFO, Bob is responsible for all finance and accounting processes for Safelight Security Advisors. Bob brings 20 years of accounting, finance and management consulting experience to the team.
Bob was most recently a Principal with Carlin Investment Management Company, a privately held investment management firm. In this role, he was responsible for the assessment of equity and debt investments and divestitures in operating businesses and real estate and provided management consulting services to the executive teams of operating businesses held in the CIMCO portfolio. In addition, Bob was the Chief Financial Officer of Alpha Analytical Inc., a CIMCO portfolio company.
Bob began his career at Ernst & Young as a staff auditor through Northeastern University’s Cooperative Education program. Bob left public accounting in 1996 as a CPA in Massachusetts and Virginia to join Teradyne. There, he was responsible for financial management of the Global Services Organization. After leaving Teradyne, Bob spent five years in management consulting, first with Price Waterhouse, then with Sapient Corporation. In 2002, Bob joined Alpha Analytical as their Chief Financial Officer.
Bob holds an MBA from Babson College and a BS in Business Administration from Northeastern University.
