Meta Taps Qualtrics' Assaf Keren as Chief Security Officer

Meta has named Assaf Keren, the Chief Security Officer at Qualtrics, as its next Chief Security Officer, Bloomberg reported. Keren joined Qualtrics on April 1, 2024 after serving as Chief Information Security Officer at PayPal, and brings more than 20 years of experience running security at payments and enterprise SaaS companies. His LinkedIn describes him as a four-time CISO.

He succeeds Guy Rosen, who announced his departure in June after nearly 13 years at Meta. Rosen has been CISO since 2022 and, according to Calcalist, also led Meta's internal AI transformation efforts over the past year. He is expected to stay several months to support a smooth handover before shifting focus to advising Israel's high-tech ecosystem, where Meta's Israeli research and development center employs hundreds of people after Facebook acquired his startup Onavo in 2013.

The choice reads as an operator pick. Keren's most recent seats, securing one of the most used payment platforms in the world at PayPal and then Qualtrics' more than 20,000 customers, sit closer to product engineering than to Washington policy work. That is a specific hint about what Meta wants next, at a moment when the company is pushing AI features across its apps and ad stack, and when the threat surface around model behaviour and data pipelines is still being defined.

The honest caveat is that the reporting so far is thin on specifics. There is no confirmed start date, no confirmed scope, and no word on whether Keren inherits Rosen's AI-transformation remit or a tighter security-only brief. Take the appointment as reported, and the shape of the role as unsettled.

If the pattern holds and large platforms keep reaching for CISOs with operator credentials rather than public-affairs polish when their long-tenured security chiefs move on, expect other companies to recruit from a very similar bench.