Patrick Neise Joins Groove as Chief Information Security Officer

It’s an exciting day at Groove. Today, we announced that Patrick Neise has joined Groove as Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). A former Director of Operations for the NSA Red Team with deep expertise in protecting information systems from cyber threats at the highest level, Patrick is the perfect candidate to fill this newly created position.

As Groove’s new CISO, Patrick is committed to implementing systems and technology to ensure that the company’s systems remain hardened against the ever-evolving and expanding security threats targeted at SaaS companies.

Groove’s commitment to security begins with its unique architecture, and I look forward to helping Groove further harden its information systems as we continue to grow the company, product offerings, and customer base. – Patrick Neise, CISO at Groove.

“Groove made some smart decisions early on that have enabled it to meet the demands of its most demanding and security-minded customers. It’s my job to implement the systems and controls to ensure we’re always one step ahead of both customer needs and emerging threats,” said Patrick Neise, CISO at Groove.
Groove stands out as the only enterprise sales engagement platform that is built natively on Salesforce, which eliminates the risks introduced by syncing with third-party databases.

In addition to the security features of its platform, Groove is SOC2 Type 11 certified and is compliant with GDPR, CCPA, and other global privacy laws.

“Patrick’s in-the-trenches experience at the NSA protecting our nation’s most valuable assets from cyber threats might seem like overkill for a software company, but security has always been a central pillar of our platform,” said Chris Rothstein, CEO and Co-founder of Groove. “It’s a big win to add his deep security expertise to our leadership team. The security needs of the large and complex enterprises we serve are only going to get more stringent, and Patrick is the perfect person to ensure we can meet them all.”

>> Learn more about Patrick’s background and his views on the state of information security today in this in-depth Q&A.

About Patrick Neise

Patrick balances out his distinguished 20 years of service in the submarine and cryptography communities of the US Navy with security leadership and consultant roles across a range of public and private companies, technology startups, and major defense contractors. Most recently, Patrick was CTO at Harvest Technology Group, where he developed and implemented technology strategy to modernize its development processes and improve speed of delivery, software quality, and security. 

After retiring from the US Navy in 2014, Patrick has devoted his career to helping organizations implement systems to support the rapid iteration of secure and reliable products. Patrick holds a D.Eng in Engineering Management from George Washington University, an MS in Information Security Engineering from the SANS Technical Institute, an MA in Information Technology Management from Webster University, and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

Security is Built into the Foundation of Groove’s Sales Engagement Platform

Groove was architectured to meet the rigorous security standards required by financial services firms, large enterprises, and other organizations needing to operate in highly secure environments. Compared to other enterprise sales engagement platforms, Groove stands in three major ways:

• Groove stores only a fraction of the PII required by other SEPs. Groove limits what we store to metadata about the given activities and none of the email / event bodies.
• Groove maintains Salesforce as the system of record. This allows companies to keep its most critical data within the security protocols they’ve established in Salesforce. The limited amount of information stored in Groove is encrypted at rest and protected by TLS in transit. 
• Groove uses the user’s own Salesforce and Google or Microsoft Graph tokens for all user-level API access. Existing access controls in those systems are honored by default.

Want to learn how Groove can help boost the productivity of your revenue teams in an efficient and secure way? Request a demo today.