It appears that another tech company has lost its security chief. A Twitter spokesperson confirmed that the company’s chief information security officer Michael Coates is departing from the company. He joined the company back in 2015.
First reported by The Verge, he notified everyone internally of his department three weeks ago and is leaving Twitter to start his own company.
Twitter has been an amazing ride, but as I mentioned internally a few weeks back, my time is coming to an end. I’m confident to leave the program with an amazing security team. What’s next? I’m off to co-found a security startup – hope to share more about what we’re doing soon!
— Michael Coates (@_mwc) March 21, 2018
Due to Facebook’s situation with Cambridge Analytica and the mess that it’s caused, there’s a lot of attention on information security right now. It’s not just Coates leaving either. Today, Google’s director of information security engineering announced that he’s departing the company after working there for eleven years. The New York Times reported two days ago that Facebook’s security chief Alex Stamos would be leaving.
