About Us

Vikram Phatak

Chairman and CEO

Vikram Phatak founded CyberRatings.org in November 2020. As one of the industry’s foremost thought leaders and a veteran of testing cybersecurity products for over 20 years, he has extensive experience in cybersecurity technologies protecting networks, endpoints and the cloud. Mr. Phatak founded NSS Labs, Inc. in 2007 and grew the company from a small test lab to a global leader in security product testing, becoming a go-to source for trusted independent, fact-based guidance on security product efficacy. Previously, Mr. Phatak founded and led several Internet and cybersecurity companies including Lucid Security and Intermedia Sciences Group, one of the first internet service providers and security consulting firms in the U.S.

Peter Armstrong

Board Member

Peter Armstrong is Managing Director at Cyber Risks Insights Ltd, and formerly The Senior Cyber Subject Matter Expert at Munich Re Group. His expertise is in cyber risk management and quantification of cyber risk exposure for large organizations. Mr. Armstrong is a thought leader in developing responses to cyber risk capital issues facing the very largest industrial enterprises, the enterprise risk management challenges they face and the necessary insurance responses. He is a Fellow of the United Kingdom’s Institute of Directors and a Member of the Board of Advisors at Infosec Global. Mr. Armstrong operated in the Defense, Intelligence and Security Sector leading cyber defense activities with a focus on industrial control systems and operational technology in Energy (including Nuclear), Utilities, Transportation, Primary Industries and manufacturing (notably Aviation, Automotive, Capital Projects and High Tech).

Cathy Main

President and Co-Founder

Prior to CyberRatings.org, Ms. Main was Vice President of Marketing & Corporate Relations at NSS Labs. She worked closely with Vikram Phatak to grow the brand. She is an accomplished executive with 30 years of experience in executive management, strategic business development, public relations, and brand marketing. Before joining NSS Labs, Ms. Main was Vice President of Global Marketing for Deluxe Entertainment Services Group and earlier in her career, she was President of Alpha Cine Laboratory. She is also a past President of Independent Feature Project / West, a non-profit member-driven organization for filmmakers (later rebranded Film Independent).

Carma Austin

Executive Vice President and Co-Founder

Carma Austin has over 20 years of experience in the cybersecurity market and holds a successful track record developing, implementing and executing go-to-market strategies for all types of organizations. Prior to joining CyberRatings.org, Ms. Austin developed and led the go-to-market strategy for IBM’s Security SaaS business. Austin, also a former NSS Labs executive, demonstrates a passion for transparency and efficacy in the cybersecurity industry and has dedicated her career to helping organizations understand and better manage cybersecurity risk. She is a founding board member of the National Cyber Security Society, a non-profit dedicated to educating small businesses about cybersecurity, and a former board member of Austin, Texas based 3Day Startup, a non-profit that teaches entrepreneurial thinking to students who are soon to enter the workforce.

Ian Foo

CTO and EVP of Product

Ian Foo has over 20 years of experience in cybersecurity, network engineering, and product development. Previously, he was a Senior Product Manager at Google, where he led the vision, strategy, and development of networking for special projects within Google Cloud Platform, driving enterprise cloud transformation at a global scale. Before Google, Ian served as Director of Product & GTM for Service Providers at Commvault, leading the transition from on-premises solutions to cloud-based SaaS models. He has also held senior roles at Huawei, Cisco, and BBN/GTE Internetworking/Verizon.

Tim Otto

Vice President of Test Operations

A veteran in testing cybersecurity technologies, Tim Otto was previously Technical Marketing Engineer Director at Juniper Networks where he ran competitive and 3rd party testing for Juniper Networks Security branch. Prior to Juniper he was Domain Manager and Testing Team Lead for NSS Labs where he led the team that designed the harnesses and tests for all of the network security tests run by NSS Labs. He has over 20 years of experience in network and cloud security, architectural design, load balancing, product configuration, packet level analysis and ethical hacking.

Thomas Skybakmoen

Vice President of Research

Thomas Skybakmoen has over 20 years of experience as both a cybersecurity researcher and analyst. He runs the Research team for CyberRatings.org and authors test reports in network, cloud and endpoint security products. From 2012 – 2020 he was a Research Analyst at NSS Labs where authored hundreds of test reports on the range of security products tested in the IT space. In collaboration with the test team, he integrated results from the test scorecards into Test Reports and Comparative Reports used as guidelines for enterprises to make more informed decisions on security product acquisitions. Prior to NSS Labs, he was Senior Research Analyst in the Web Application Development & Integration group at Gartner providing research and analysis for thousands of Gartner clients.