Jerry Petersen 
- Nakasone is a seven-time recipient of the Wash100 Award
- He is a former U.S. Army general who retired from service in 2024
- Armadin CEO Kevin Mandia said Nakasone’s experience will benefit the company’s growth initiatives
Cybersecurity company Armadin announced Thursday that it has appointed retired U.S. Army Gen. Paul Nakasone to its board of directors as an independent member.
Commenting on the appointment, Armadin CEO Kevin Mandia said, “General Nakasone is one of the most respected leaders in cybersecurity and national security. His perspectives on strategy and execution will be invaluable as Armadin pursues its growth initiatives.”
For his part, Nakasone said Armadin brings to national and economic security organizations what he called “the discipline of persistent engagement,” which includes the continuous validation of defenses “at machine speed” as demanded by “adversaries who never pause.”
“I look forward to working alongside Kevin and the Armadin team to advance collective defense and help organizations build the resilience an evolving threat environment demands,” Nakasone added.
Who Is Paul Nakasone?
Paul Nakasone is a seven-time Wash100 Award winner and former leader of U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency. Before taking the joint post, he commanded U.S. Army Cyber Command from October 2016 to April 2018. He took charge of Cybercom, NSA and the Central Security Service in May 2018.
At Cybercom, Nakasone promoted persistent engagement as a core approach to countering adversaries and argued for expanding the command to meet its mission needs. He helped the Pentagon and federal law enforcement shield the 2020 elections from nation-state interference, and advanced the Joint Cyber Warfighting Architecture.
In April 2022, he presented lawmakers with five priorities for the command: readiness, operations defending the nation, integrated deterrence, workforce recruiting and training, and a warfighting architecture with enhanced budget control. That December, he elevated to a subordinate unified command the Cyber National Mission Force, whose personnel worked on election security, espionage, ransomware and other threats. Under his leadership in 2022, Cybercom also ran a 10-day defensive operation against publicly known malware and launched the Constellation pilot with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to speed new capabilities to cyber operators.
His 2023 Wash100 recognized his work building partnerships with agencies, industry and academia.
Nakasone handed leadership of Cybercom, NSA and the Central Security Service to Air Force Gen. Timothy Haugh on Feb. 2, 2024, at a ceremony at Fort Meade, Maryland, that also marked his retirement from service.
He joined Vanderbilt University on June 1, 2024, as founding director of its Institute of National Security, which the university said was established to help the government and military counter emerging threats and to develop the next generation of national security leaders. At Vanderbilt, Nakasone is also a distinguished research professor of engineering science and management and a special adviser to the chancellor.
That same month, he joined OpenAI’s board and its safety and security committee. He later founded the Nakasone Group, a boutique national security advisory firm he chairs.
What Is Armadin?
Armadin is a Palo Alto, California-based artificial intelligence cybersecurity company whose platform works to conduct automated red teaming, sending autonomous software agents to attack customer networks and expose the routes an adversary could take. The AI agents operate like an attacker, linking minor weaknesses into verified attack chains. The platform gives security teams visibility into each attack path and its potential impact.
Armadin publicly launched in March 2026 with $189.9 million in seed and Series A funding. In October, it closed a $255.5 million Series B co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Accel, pushing its valuation past $2.5 billion and total funding to $445 million. The company said it is running agentic attack campaigns in production for Fortune 500 enterprises and government customers. It plans to put the new capital toward scaling its platform, research, training and go-to-market efforts.
Who Is Armadin’s CEO?
The company is led by Kevin Mandia, who brings to the chief executive role more than 30 years of experience in cybersecurity. He previously served as CEO of FireEye and founded Mandiant, a digital forensics and incident response firm that Google acquired in 2022 for $5.4 billion.
Mandia is also a general partner at Ballistic Ventures, where he mentors and invests in early-stage cybersecurity entrepreneurs. His work at Armadin focuses on how artificial intelligence is reshaping cyber threats and how organizations can build defenses that adapt to them.
