Team8, a leading company-building venture group, announced that Charles Blauner, previously Global Head of Information Security, Citigroup, joins the company as Operating Partner and CISO in Residence.

As CISO in Residence, Blauner will play a key role in advising Team8’s portfolio companies on their security offerings from an enterprise perspective. With an information security career primarily in financial services spanning over thirty years, Blauner held senior security executive roles for Citigroup since 2005. Prior to that, Blauner held several roles including being the CISO at JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank. Charles has held numerous industry leadership positions including Chair of the Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council (FSSCC), Chair of the American Bankers Association E-Commerce Policy Committee and Founding Director of the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC). In 2015 Blauner received the Wasserman Award for lifetime contributions by ISACA.

“Citigroup has been a strategic partner of Team8 since 2014,  I served as the Chair of the company’s Advisory Board since it’s formation and I’ve been extremely impressed with the company’s know-how, foresight and extraordinary research capabilities which is what led me to take on this more active role of Operating Partner and CISO in Residence,” said Charles Blauner. “For leading enterprises in financial services, healthcare and other business sectors, the current crisis is accelerating their digital transformation strategies and I look forward to assisting Team8 in identifying and developing these opportunities from a CISO perspective.” 

“Our fast changing, hyper-connected world is now further accentuated, making a resilient, agile and secure digital infrastructure more important than ever,” said Nadav Zafrir, co-founder and Partner of Team8. “This is the time for cutting edge, practical cyber solutions that strike a delicate balance of security and productivity. Charles is one of a select few of industry visionaries who possesses the technological depth and a clear practitioner’s vantage point. We are delighted and honored to have Charles on board.”