With new hire, Forcepoint brings infrastructure solution to government market

The Raytheon-backed cybersecurity joint venture Forcepoint has brought its critical infrastructure business into the fold of global governments and subsequently appointed a new sales lead for the expanded division.

Eric Trexler, former executive director of civilian and national security programs at McAfee, has joined Forcepoint as vice president of sales for the global governments and critical infrastructure business. He will report to the business’ leader Sean Berg, Forcepoint said Tuesday.

In a blog post explaining the consolidation, Berg said industries that fall within critical infrastructure share in common with government agencies the need to provide assured communications between both information and operational technology environments, or IT and OT.

Berg added the Forcepoint venture that Raytheon owns 80 percent of seeks to create for critical infrastructure customers the same secured connections the government’s classified networks have.

Critical infrastructure areas he cited include electric power, water, financial services and health care.

At McAfee, Trexler led the security software company’s work to create unified cyber defense architectures for civilian, intelligence and other national security agencies. He has also managed major accounts at companies such as Salesforce.com, EMC Corp. and Sybase.

Before his private sector career, Trexler was an Army Airborne Ranger for four years and specialized in communications.