As CounterCraft grows, and our platform is adopted across various sectors and markets, we continue to expand our board of advisers. We are very pleased to announce the addition of an outstanding executive to our roster of Strategic Advisors: Maria Vello.

Maria Vello is the newest member of our board of strategic advisors. She is a cybercrime veteran, bringing many decades of cybersecurity experience bridging the gap between public and private sectors. She is a true believer in public-private partnerships and collaboration and helped to establish the basis of threat intelligence sharing.

Maria has served as the CEO of the Cyber Defence Alliance (CDA) and NCFTA (National Cyber-Forensics & Training Alliance). With more than 25 years of experience in the security, design, integration, risk, architectural design, and implementation of global corporate systems, security architectures, and networks, she has been responsible for integrating security best practices, risk, compliance and raising awareness levels at every level in every organization for which she has worked. Maria managed a Global Fortune 100 network infrastructure and systems from security, LAN, WAN, Voice, Video, Voicemail, gateways to the network architecture.

CounterCraft CEO David Barroso commented on the strategic partnership, stating “We are thrilled to have Maria on board with us at a time of huge growth and development for the company. She has such extensive experience and know-how, and to have her backing of our technology is further proof of its importance.”

In her previous experience, Maria played an instrumental role in major and newsworthy shared successes across industry and law enforcement, like GameOverZeus and Darkode. During her leadership, the NCFTA was named in President Obama’s Executive Order in October of 2014 and attended the signing of the Executive order. Maria brings a wealth of experience in trust-based collaboration and information sharing across industry, law enforcement, government and academia to proactively detect, protect, deter, dismantle and stop cybercrime/threats. Maria will collaborate with CounterCraft’s leadership team on the business’s strategic growth plans as well as extend their connectivity within financial and government sectors.

Commenting on the partnership, Maria said, “I look forward to having an exciting, productive relationship with the CounterCraft team. I think this technology can help advance cybersecurity by way of the actionable, real time threat intel it provides.” By collaborating and working with Law Enforcement and Industry we can play a role in providing a safer cyber future globally.

Maria has been lauded with honors throughout her career, most recently being named one of the 2020 Women in IT Security honors as well as the AT&T Leaders Council award. She was also honored by the FBI Executive team within the FBI Cyber Unit, Department of Justice and FBI Cyber Initiative Resource and Fusion Unit (CIRFU) for her exemplary service, partnership and contributions to the Cyber Division and by the NCFTA for her exemplary leadership, dedication and unparalleled passion for the NCFTA mission. In 2014, she was named as one of the Top Ten Women in Cloud.

For more information on the CounterCraft team, click here.