Exclusive: Tenable co-CEO on Australia, AI and growth

Tenable is in a brand new era.

Following the passing of visionary CEO Amit Yoran in January, the cybersecurity company appointed long-time executives Mark Thurmond and Steve Vintz as co-chief executives.

"When he passed away, Steve and I both approached the board together and said, 'We think we can lead this company together in a co-CEO model better [than] bringing someone in from the outside,'" Thurmond said. "We helped build the strategy with Amit."

Thurmond stressed that the transition only felt natural, as he and Vintz had been supporting Amit directly in his CEO duties during his illness.

"We were doing this for well over a year before we became co-CEOs," he explained during a recent interview. "You would never go to the outside and bring in two random guys to do this job, but Steve and I were here for a very long time."

The company has honoured Yoran's legacy with scholarships, a commemorative day off for staff, and a continued commitment to his exposure management vision.

"There isn't a day that goes by that our employees and our customers don't think about Amit," Thurmond said.

The dual-CEO model has also brought stability, according to the co-CEO.

"Since we were announced co-CEOs we have not had one vice president, senior vice president or vice president leave the company,"

The pair's mantra: "check your ego at the door" has become a cultural pillar. "Steve and I talk three or four or five times a day, and every time we make decisions together," Thurmond said. 

Their focus now is Tenable One, the company's flagship exposure management platform.

"We made an unbelievably conscious effort to focus and pivot the entire company on Tenable One," Thurmond said. "Everything we do now, the number one guiding principle is building, developing and designing Tenable One to be the best exposure management platform in the market." That bet is paying off: "In Q2, 40% of our bookings came from Tenable One," he added.

The strategy resonates with customers seeking fewer tools and more actionable insights. "Any organisation that has over 2,000 employees has anywhere from 30 to 50 different cyber tools," he said. "CISOs want to consolidate to four to eight different products sitting in one technology. That's what we're able to do with Tenable One." Artificial intelligence is a force multiplier. "When you layer on AI, that is even making it more efficient," Thurmond said.

Exposure management, he explained, is the next stage of cybersecurity evolution, combining visibility, context and remediation. "If you don't have a true exposure management platform, you're not able to see all of the risk," he said. "Seventy-five to 80% of all breaches and ransomware attacks happen on known vulnerabilities. We're able to identify those vulnerabilities… prioritise them and do automated remediation."

Thurmond confirmed that research and development spending is up "30%" year on year. The Vulcan and Apex acquisitions are being integrated into Tenable One to add third-party data ingestion and advanced AI capabilities.

"Be able to control and see and secure and govern these AI environments," he said. "This is arguably the fastest-growing area in cyber right now."

Australia is a key market for the company.

"Australia is actually the largest country that we do business in here in the APJ market," he said. He will spend the week in Perth and Sydney meeting "well over 25" CISOs, customers and government officials. "We work with some of the largest financial institutions and government agencies throughout the entire country of Australia and New Zealand," he said.

Analyst recognition has reinforced Tenable's strategy.

In August, IDC named Tenable a Leader in its Worldwide Exposure Management 2025 MarketScape, praising the breadth of its platform and its AI-driven analytics.

In July, Gartner Peer Insights recognised Tenable as the 2025 Customers' Choice for Vulnerability Assessment, the only vendor to achieve that honour this year.

"We now have all of the analysts giving us credit that we are the number one exposure management company in the world," Thurmond said. 

Looking ahead, Thurmond is focused on three priorities: full integration of third-party ingest and automated remediation, delivering AI capabilities that solve real-world problems for large enterprises and governments, and restoring double-digit growth.

"We want to get back and really grow Tenable in the mid-teens to 20% growth rates," he said.

"We're only going to continue to innovate."