Four-time CISO and former McAfee/Intel Security Americas CTO will lead the agentic AI and autonomy efforts that control security operations end to end on the Athena platform.
Athena Agentic announced the appointment of Brett Kelsey as Chief AI Officer, where he will lead the AI and agentic strategy behind Athena, the platform that operates a customer’s entire security environment end to end. Kelsey brings more than 30 years of leadership in information security across global technology companies, professional services, and the public sector, including C-suite and senior roles at McAfee/Intel Security, Optiv, and Forescout. A four-time Chief Information Security Officer, he has led security for organizations ranging from state agencies to some of the largest cities in the US, and most recently guided emerging security and technology companies through his advisory firm, Omni Cyber Solutions.
Kelsey’s career spans the full arc of the industry’s evolution, from network security and professional services, through predictive AI and proactive exposure management, to the emerging discipline of agentic security operations. At McAfee/Intel Security, where he served as Vice President and CTO for the Americas, he helped shape one of the earliest integrated security data exchange frameworks, enabling partners to build connected security ecosystems across a complex vendor landscape.
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“Brett is a dynamic leader with the qualifications and experience to help Athena expand globally. He knows what it takes to operate a security environment because he has done it. That is exactly the leader we want driving our combined vision on behalf of our customers.”
Michael Bertamini, Chief Executive Officer, Athena Agentic
As Chief AI Officer, Kelsey will lead the development of Athena’s agentic reasoning capabilities across the platform, including the agent design, authority matrix framework, and autonomous decision models that define how Athena operates within and on behalf of customer environments. He will also serve as a key voice with customers, channel partners, and the research community on the safe and accountable deployment of autonomous AI in security operations.
Kelsey has held the CISSP credential since 2001 and has completed advanced executive leadership development throughout his career, including during his tenures at Lucent Technologies, McAfee/Intel Security, and Optiv. He is a published author on cybersecurity strategy, a contributor to Dark Reading, and a frequent speaker at industry conferences and cybersecurity symposiums. He is also a recognized voice on cybersecurity strategies, continuous exposure management, proactive risk strategy, and the organizational transformation required to operationalize AI in security.
“A security program cannot be run one alert at a time. You run the whole environment: every tool, every signal, every risk decision. Athena, powered by our AI engine, operates all of it end to end, autonomously, shows its work, and in terms the board can act on and the analyst on shift can verify. That is what managing risk actually looks like: AI doing what it should have been doing all along, watching everything, constantly, for threats before they become incidents.”
Brett Kelsey, Chief AI Officer, Athena Agentic
Kelsey joins CEO Michael Bertamini and the Athena Agentic leadership team as we continue to enhance the Athena platform.
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