Recently SafeNet announced the appointment of Dave Hansen, an information security and cloud veteran, as the company’s new President and CEO. Help Net Security put him in the hot seat to learn more about his background, as well as future plans.

How has working at CA and BMC Software prepared you for your CEO position at SafeNet?

The broad number of roles I’ve held at both companies has been invaluable and taught me the importance of cultivating a culture of success. From my experiences in the field to management to my time on the IT side as CIO, I was able to gain a deep understanding and appreciation of the requirements to successfully run a business and support the needs of customers. I also saw how important it is to foster a strong, cross-functional team to deliver on those needs and guarantee success for the company.

Second, next to the customer, the people in your organization and the industry knowledge they possess are the most important. It’s critical to develop your existing employee base, identify high performers early on, and then give them the tools they need to succeed. I worked at one organization where the CEO took an active role in nurturing internal talent. That taught me the level of influence CEOs have and our responsibility for developing talent, building strong teams and driving productivity across the business.


What are your long term goals for the company? Innovation must be high on your priority list.

Innovation is critical to any long term strategy and it is a core value at SafeNet. Having joined the SafeNet this month, my first priority is getting to know our business inside and out so we can ensure our strategy and vision for the future is on target.

I’ve been spending my time meeting with employees around the world and hearing directly from our customers. What I came away with, and the feedback that I’m hearing, is that SafeNet has amazing technology. In my view, we have one of the strongest high security product portfolios in the industry. We need to build upon that, and go deeper with our customer relationships to ensure that we are meeting their current and emerging needs and execute well against those needs.

Given the constantly evolving threat environment, innovation has to be at the center of everything we do. We have an internal process and incubator track that allows employees across functions to work unrestrained and foster the innovation required to develop products that address the next generation of threats that our customers will soon encounter.