Commercial Account Executive

Horizon3 launches sovereign Sydney instance, bringing the World's Best AI Hacker onshore for Australian organisations. Horizon3 | Published 31 Aug 2026 COMPANY NEWS: New in-country sovereign instance delivers production-safe autonomous security validation with full Australian data residency, enabling government, critical infrastructure, and enterprise customers to continuously prove resilience in the AI vs. AI era. Horizon3, the AI-Native Proactive Security Company behind NodeZero(R), the World's Best AI Hacker(TM), today announced the general availability of its first Asia-Pacific Sovereign Instance, hosted in Sydney. The new Australian point of presence keeps all customer data resident in-country and enables Australian organisations to run continuous, production-safe autonomous penetration testing under full data sovereignty. As adversaries increasingly weaponise AI to discover and exploit vulnerabilities at machine speed, organisations can no longer rely on theoretical findings or periodic assessments. NodeZero continuously validates real, exploitable attack paths across Internal, External, Cloud, Identity, and Web Application surfaces - then drives a disciplined hack-fix-verify loop so customers can prove their defences actually hold. The Sydney Sovereign Instance makes this capability available onshore for the first time in the region, giving Australian organisations a practical way to operationalise Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) with continuous, attacker-validated evidence. The instance is purpose-built for the highest-trust Australian environments, including government agencies, critical infrastructure operators, Defence Industrial Base organisations, major banks, and other regulated entities. By keeping data resident in Australia and operating under local control, it helps organisations meet key requirements under the SOCI Act, APRA CPS 234, the ASD Essential Eight, and related frameworks, while reducing operational and data sovereignty risk. "Australian organisations face the same AI-accelerated threat landscape as the rest of the world, but they rightly demand that the tools they use to defend themselves meet the highest standards of data residency and national control," said Gareth Cox, Vice President of Sales, Asia Pacific and Japan, Horizon3. "With the Sydney Sovereign Instance, customers can now run the World's Best AI Hacker continuously and safely, knowing their data never leaves Australia. This enables them to move beyond assumptions and continuously prove which exposures actually matter - and that remediation works." "Data sovereignty is no longer a compliance checkbox, it is a strategic requirement for any platform trusted with critical infrastructure and national security workloads," said Snehal Antani, Co-Founder and CEO of Horizon3. "As AI-powered attacks accelerate, countries will only allow continuous, autonomous security validation on their most sensitive networks if they know the data remains under their control and is accessed by cleared nationals. The Sydney Sovereign Instance is the first step in making NodeZero available as a true national-scale capability for Australia." The Sydney instance complements Horizon3's existing points of presence in the United States and Germany and marks the company's first Sovereign Instance in Asia Pacific. It follows Horizon3's recent US$250 million Series E at a valuation exceeding US$2 billion, which is funding accelerated international expansion, including deeper investment across Australia, New Zealand, and the wider Asia-Pacific region. Horizon3's NodeZero platform has already executed more than 310,000 production-safe autonomous security tests for more than 7,500 organisations worldwide, including multinational banks, major healthcare networks, four Fortune 10 enterprises, and national security agencies. The company is FedRAMP High authorised and helps customers meet demanding regulatory regimes globally. With the Sydney Sovereign Instance now generally available, Australian organisations can continuously find, prioritise, and verify the risks that actually matter, while keeping their most sensitive security data under Australian sovereign control.

Horizon3 names Chad Keefer Vice President of Federal Sales. August 25, 2026 Former Marine Corps special operator and 24-year federal go-to-market leader will build Horizon3's federal sales organization and drive adoption of continuous security validation across civilian, defense and national security agencies. SAN FRANCISCO - August 25, 2026 - Horizon3, the AI-native proactive security leader, today announced the appointment of Chad Keefer as Vice President of Federal Sales. In this role, Keefer will lead Horizon3's go-to-market strategy across the federal civilian, defense and intelligence community markets, building out the sales organization, processes and partner relationships needed to scale adoption of the company's NodeZero autonomous pentesting platform across government. A 24-year veteran of federal go-to-market leadership, Keefer joins Horizon3 after most recently serving as Head of U.S. Federal at Infoblox. He previously held Vice President roles at Appian, leading both the company's Federal Civilian and Enterprise Financial Markets go-to-market strategies, and spent a decade at Forescout Technologies, rising from Sales Director to Vice President of the Federal Civilian Business Unit and ultimately leading multi-segment sales across Public Sector, Financial Services, Healthcare, Energy and Strategic Enterprise accounts. Earlier in his career, he led federal security sales teams at IBM (BigFix) and ArcSight, spanning both Department of Defense and civilian agency programs. Over the past 15 years, Keefer has built and led federal go-to-market teams through reorganizations, technology transformations and ground-up builds. Before his technology career, Keefer served as a Platoon Leader in the United States Marine Corps, where he led small-unit teams in high-stakes environments - experience he credits with shaping his approach to discipline, mission focus and team-building. "Chad has spent nearly a quarter century building and scaling federal go-to-market organizations, and he brings the operator's instinct to match our technology to the government's mission," said Matt Hartley, Chief Revenue Officer at Horizon3. "As agencies move to operationalize continuous monitoring and cyber readiness mandates, Chad will help us prove those investments actually hold up against a real attacker. He's exactly the leader we need to scale Horizon3's federal business and build the team to support it." "Government agencies have invested significantly in cyber readiness," said Chad Keefer, Vice President of Federal Sales at Horizon3. "Our job is to prove those investments work against a real attacker. Can they get through the controls? Can they move through the environment? Can they reach something that matters? And when we fix the problem, can we prove the attack path is actually gone? I want to establish continuous security validation as an operational standard across civilian, defense and national security environments, and make Horizon3 a trusted part of how those organizations protect their missions. Ultimately, success means changing the standard from 'we believe our controls are working' to 'we can prove they're working.'" Keefer's appointment builds on Horizon3's continued momentum in the federal market, where the company already counts the NSA, CISA and other federal agencies among its more than 7,000 customers worldwide. As Horizon3 stands up a mature, full-scale federal go-to-market organization, Keefer will lead the buildout of dedicated sales, technical and marketing resources to support civilian, defense and intelligence community customers. About Horizon3. Horizon3, the AI-Native Proactive Security Company behind NodeZero(R), shifts the advantage from attackers to defenders by giving organizations the power to fight AI with AI. NodeZero, the World's Best AI Hacker(TM), autonomously tests defenses at machine speed, safely uncovers and prioritizes exploitable attack paths, instantly verifies fixes, and drives a continuous hack, fix, verify loop. More than 7,000 organizations, including global defense agencies, Fortune 10 enterprises, multinational banks, and major healthcare providers, trust Horizon3 for security they can prove. Horizon3 was recently named the Fastest Growing Cybersecurity Company in North America by the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 and named one of the Most Innovative companies by Fast Company in 2026. Follow Horizon3 on LinkedIn and X.

Horizon3 & Deloitte forge cyber resilience alliance. Tue, 25th Aug 2026 (Today) Horizon3 has formed an alliance with Deloitte in Australia focused on cyber resilience for organisations across Australia and New Zealand. The partnership combines Horizon3's NodeZero security platform with Deloitte's cyber advisory, transformation, resilience and managed services. Together, they will work with enterprises seeking more frequent testing of cyber defences and clearer evidence of which weaknesses attackers can exploit. Boards, regulators, customers and insurers are putting more pressure on companies to show they can withstand cyber incidents. At the same time, many organisations still rely on periodic assessments and fragmented security tools, leaving gaps between tests. Horizon3 and Deloitte said their approach is designed to help clients move beyond theoretical risk scoring and broad lists of findings. Instead, it focuses on identifying exploitable attack paths, ranking the most significant exposures and checking whether remediation has reduced risk. NodeZero is designed to validate attack paths across internal systems, internet-facing assets, cloud environments, identities, web applications and hybrid estates. Deloitte will add strategic and operational support to help clients interpret findings and act on them across security and IT teams. Shift in testing The alliance reflects a broader shift in cyber security from point-in-time reviews to continuous validation. Companies face growing scrutiny not just to report risks, but to show that controls work in practice. The need has become more urgent as security teams contend with faster-moving threats, vulnerabilities linked to artificial intelligence tools and increasingly automated attack methods. The companies said their work together is intended to help executive teams understand cyber exposure in business terms rather than through technical scores alone. For Deloitte, the arrangement adds an attacker-perspective testing platform to its cyber consulting and managed services work in Australia. For Horizon3, it opens access to a large advisory and delivery network in a market where companies are seeking more measurable ways to assess resilience. Gareth Cox, Vice President, Sales, APJ, Horizon3, said the alliance responds to demand for clearer evidence of risk. "Organisations across Australia and New Zealand do not need more cyber noise. They need proof," said Gareth Cox, Vice President, Sales, APJ, Horizon3. "By combining Deloitte's strategic advisory and delivery strength with Horizon3's ability to safely discover exposure, prioritise based on impact and remediate with clarity, we can help executive leaders make faster, better-informed security decisions, reduce risk and demonstrate measurable resilience over time." Client focus The two companies will target organisations seeking stronger assurance over the effectiveness of cyber controls across broad, complex technology estates. That includes businesses running a mix of on-premise systems, cloud services and externally exposed applications. The alliance is also intended to help security and IT teams improve prioritisation. Rather than treating all findings as equal, the goal is to highlight the exposures that create material business risk and verify that fixes have worked. Liz Douglass, Partner and Cyber Lead, Deloitte Australia, said the need for continuous evidence is growing as the threat environment changes. "In an increasingly dynamic threat environment, organisations need more than periodic assurance exercises. They need continuous, evidence-based insight into where they are exposed and how to strengthen resilience. Our partnership with Horizon3 expands our ability to help clients translate attacker-perspective validation into practical action across strategy, operations and transformation," said Liz Douglass, Partner and Cyber Lead, Deloitte Australia. Horizon3 said more than 7,000 organisations use its technology, including defence agencies, large enterprises, banks and healthcare providers. The company positions NodeZero as a platform that can test defences, uncover exploitable paths and verify fixes in an ongoing cycle. Cox said the relationship pairs Horizon3's exposure validation with Deloitte's ability to help clients turn that evidence into action. "Horizon3 provides evidence of real exposure through attacker-perspective validation, and Deloitte helps clients translate that evidence into action, operating change, and sustained cyber resilience," said Cox. "That is what makes this alliance meaningful for executive leaders."