Facebook’s security chief is leaving, and no one’s going to replace him

Facebook’s chief security officer, Alex Stamos, stated at present that he’ll be leaving the corporate later this month. The announcement comes only a day after Fb — and to a big extent, Stamos — revealed that Fb had found malicious actors who proceed to use the platform to manipulate political discussions and organizing in the USA. Stamos gained’t get replaced after he leaves, that means no one will maintain the title of “chief security officer” at Fb. All eyes are educated on the corporate to see the way it will cope with main security issues, together with the usage of faux accounts to manipulate politics and the Cambridge Analytica knowledge scandal. As an alternative of constructing out a devoted security group, Fb has dissolved it and is as an alternative embedding security engineers inside its different divisions. “We aren’t naming a brand new CSO, since earlier this yr we embedded our security engineers, analysts, investigators, and different specialists in our product and engineering groups to higher handle the rising security threats we face,” a Fb spokesman stated in an e-mail. Fb will “proceed to consider what sort of construction works finest” to defend customers’ security, he stated. “We anticipate to be judged on what we do … not whether or not we’ve got somebody with a sure title.” Stamos’ departure nonetheless appears to be an enormous loss, even aside from the symbolic title. Stamos was recognized for being one of many few executives at Fb keen to have interaction with individuals exterior the corporate concerning the service’s ongoing issues. He often interacted with reporters on Twitter about security points, typically in unusually candid phrases. Fb employed Stamos in 2015. He had labored at Yahoo in the same function earlier than then, however resigned after discovering that the corporate had constructed a system to scan emails for the US authorities, in accordance to Reuters. Stamos’ final day shall be on August 17th. He’ll be instructing and conducting analysis at Stanford after that. In a press release, Fb COO Sheryl Sandberg stated the corporate “look[s] ahead to collaborating with him in his new function.” Stamos’ departure had been selected final yr, in accordance to a New York Occasions report from March, however Fb reportedly needed to preserve him on till August. Fb is clearly conscious that shedding its chief security officer and dissolving its devoted security group, in the course of all that’s going on, is not an excellent look. So most of the firm’s statements at present are clearly designed to handle apparent issues that come up. “We anticipate to be judged on what we do to defend individuals’s security, not whether or not we’ve got somebody with a sure title,” a spokesperson stated. In one other assertion, Fb stated it is “investing closely in security to handle new kinds of threats” and that its new security construction has “helped us do extra to preserve individuals protected.” https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/1/17640852/facebook-cso-alex-stamos-departing-no-replacement