Chris Bates

SandboxAQ appointed Chris Bates as its first Chief Information Security Officer on May 1, 2024. Bates previously served as Chief Trust and Security Officer at SentinelOne. He will help develop the company's AQtive Guard cryptography management platform.

According to the release, Bates is responsible for protecting the intellectual property, communications and data of SandboxAQ. Marc Manzano, General Manager of the Cybersecurity Group at SandboxAQ, said Bates will engage with CISO peers at customers that include government agencies and global banks.

At SentinelOne, the release says, Bates helped scale the company through its cybersecurity IPO in 2021. During a tenure of more than seven years at SentinelOne, he led business and technical functions covering privacy, data, SaaS operations, product and cybersecurity. PR Newswire reports that Bates integrated acquisitions at SentinelOne and built and scaled its data, business application, IT and security teams. Before SentinelOne, the release says, he held technical leadership roles at ACS, NuScale Power, Fidelis Cybersecurity and Nike, and he consulted for RSA. PR Newswire reports that in a senior role at Nike, Bates created the CISO office's first business operations processes. While working at Fidelis and SentinelOne, Bates developed integrated intelligence functions with the CISA, FBI and NSA, PR Newswire reports. The release says he began his career in 1996 by helping to build some of central Oregon's first Internet Service Providers. He sat on the advisory boards of IT-ISAC, YL Ventures, strongDM and two stealth startups at the time of the announcement, according to the release.

SandboxAQ describes itself as an enterprise SaaS company offering solutions at the nexus of AI and quantum technology. Its core team formed at Alphabet Inc., and SandboxAQ became an independent company backed by growth capital in 2022, the company says.