Richard Stiennon is Chief Research Analyst for IT-Harvest, the firm he founded in 2005 to cover the 4,070+ vendors that make up the IT security industry. He has presented on the topic of cybersecurity in 32 countries on six continents. He was a lecturer at Charles Sturt University in Australia. He is the author of Surviving Cyberwar (Bloombury, 2010) and Washington Post Best Seller, There Will Be Cyberwar. His research appears on Substack. Stiennon was Chief Strategy Officer for Blancco Technology Group, the Chief Marketing Officer for Fortinet, Inc. and VP Threat Research at Webroot Software. Prior to that he was VP Research at Gartner. He has a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Michigan, and his MA in War in the Modern World from King’s College, London. His latest book Guardians of the Machine Age: Why AI Security Will Define the Future of Digital Defense is coming out in January, 2026.