Career profile
Chris Bates
Chief Security Officer, Cyberhaven
- Role as of 23 January 2025, the date of the latest source
- 23 January 2025
As of January 2025, Chris Bates is the Chief Security Officer of Cyberhaven, an AI-powered data security company, where he oversees the company's security strategy.
"The rise of AI has created unprecedented opportunities to revolutionize data security, but it's also introduced significant challenges," Bates said.
Career path
Bates began his career in 1996 helping build some of the first Internet Service Providers in central Oregon.
He later held a senior role at Nike, where he developed the first business operations processes for the CISO office, and went on to technical leadership roles at Fidelis Cybersecurity (General Dynamics), NuScale Power, and ACS (Xerox), while also consulting for RSA (EMC).
At SentinelOne, Bates worked as Principal Architect, leveraging incident response, security operations, security architecture, and strategy experience to shape how the company approached cybersecurity in its products.
By October 2019 he held the title of VP Security Strategy at SentinelOne, speaking publicly about the value of transparent, third-party security testing.
He went on to serve as Chief Trust and Security Officer at SentinelOne for more than seven years, helping scale the company to the largest cybersecurity IPO to date in 2021 and building security, IT, business application, and data teams while integrating acquisitions.
While at SentinelOne and earlier at Fidelis, Bates built integrated intelligence functions with agencies including the NSA, FBI, and CISA.
In May 2024, SandboxAQ appointed Bates as its first Chief Information Security Officer, a role in which he was responsible for protecting the company's data, communications, and intellectual property while contributing to its AQtive Guard cryptography management platform.
He attended the RSA Conference that year as SandboxAQ's newly appointed CISO.
In January 2025, Cyberhaven announced Bates's appointment as Chief Security Officer, citing his experience developing and implementing security and business strategies for organizations ranging from Series B startups to Fortune 100 corporations.
Advisory work
Bates has served on the advisory boards of strongDM, YL Ventures, IT-ISAC, and two stealth startups.
