Yahoo Hires TrustyCon's Alex Stamos as Information Chief

Yahoo has hired Alex Stamos, the man behind the security conference TrustyCon, as its new chief of information, according to reports.

Stamos will start work on March 10 and he will report directly to Yahoo chief Marissa Mayer, the Re/Code reported. Stamos, who organized TrustyCon, a one-day security conference held last week in San Francisco, is also the chief technical officer of domain-hosting company Artemis Internet. He also founded security and consulting firm iSEC Partners.

TrustyCon was born from backlash against the RSA Conference, run by the security arm of EMC. Reuters reported that the group had used encryption technology with a "back door" to let U.S. National Security Agency agents gain access for a $10 million check, according to the report. Security professionals wanted to boycott the conference but also see a similar conference -- and that's how TrustyCon was organized. (RSA has denied the Reuters report.)
 
Yahoo declined to comment on the hire. However, its last chief information officer, Justin Somaini, left in January 2013 to be a vice president at cloud storage company Box. The post has been open for more than a year.
 
So is starting a conference the way to get big Silicon Valley companies to notice you? Job-hunters take heed.
 
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