Charles Lyons-Burt
Sam Hutton is a co-founder of Glasswall, a London-based cybersecurity technology company that has steadily grown over the last 20 years to make as much of an impact in the U.S. as it has in Europe. Hutton was the organization’s first chief technology officer and he offers equally fierce expertise in the nuts and bolts of tech systems as he does business growth.
As such, he is now chief growth officer at Glasswall, a position he’s held for three and a half years, after almost seven years leading the company’s North America segment as senior vice president. His work as CGO has included nurturing sales teams to high returns, encouraging collaboration and unleashing new go-to-market strategies.
He sat down with us for a Spotlight interview to explain how Glasswall’s content disarm and reconstruction, or CDR, technology is helping U.S. federal agencies, particularly with the under-discussed vulnerability of file security. Hutton also discussed how the company is working to help Department of Defense clients achieve their 2027 zero trust deadline.
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ExecutiveBiz: What do you think is the biggest threat facing U.S. cyber systems today, and what can be done to protect against that threat?
Sam Hutton: The most significant threat comes from the sheer pace of change. In particular, nation-state adversaries and other threat actors are now leveraging AI to create new forms of malware, automate exploits and industrialize phishing campaigns. Much of this malicious activity is delivered through files, a significant challenge for traditional detection-based security tools, which cannot keep pace with this level of sophistication.
At Glasswall, we believe the only proven response is to treat every file as untrusted and proactively rebuild it to a known-good standard before it enters an organization. Our content disarm and reconstruction, or CDR, technologies have been built to neutralize both known and unknown threats, enabling government customers to remove risk from the equation rather than attempting to detect it after the fact.
EBiz: As chief growth officer, how do you balance an allegiance to the mission of helping government customers with a need to generate revenue and increase margins?
Hutton: In practice, these priorities are closely aligned. By helping government customers achieve their mission goals, particularly through the adoption of zero trust strategies, we are also enabling them to improve efficiency and reduce costs. File-based threats are a case in point, not least because traditional antivirus, sandbox and detection-based tools simply cannot keep up. By complementing these reactive technologies with proactive CDR, we deliver better protection, fewer false positives, faster workflows and lower operational overheads. The result is stronger security outcomes and a compelling value proposition for our customers, which in turn helps deliver growth and long-term sustainability for Glasswall.
EBiz: In your opinion, what will zero trust success look like, and what is Glasswall doing to help federal customers achieve that success?
Hutton: Success will be achieved when government agencies are in a position to eliminate implicit trust in every area of their IT environment, from users, devices and networks, to applications and, crucially, files. Success will also mean federal customers can share information safely across domains, move data securely to and from the cloud, and operate upload portals without fear that malicious content will potentially compromise their systems.
Our role is to close one of the most significant blind spots in any zero trust strategy: file security. Specifically, our CDR technology assumes every file is potentially malicious, validates it against the manufacturer’s specification, rebuilds it to a safe standard, and delivers a clean, fully functional version to the end user. This approach helps agencies meet NIST’s Zero Trust Architecture Model and establish the resilience required to withstand advanced cyber threats.
EBiz: The DOD has a department-wide zero trust implementation goal of 2027. How has Glasswall assisted in achieving this and what are the major things standing in your way?
Hutton: We are already helping Department of Defense customers make progress toward this important goal by delivering proactive file protection as part of wider partner-led initiatives. Whether our solutions are integrated into cross-domain solutions, embedded within file upload portals or applied at scale during cloud migrations, Glasswall CDR ensures that only safe, fully functional files move across trust boundaries. Crucially, our technology has been tested and validated by some of the world’s leading intelligence agencies, giving federal users confidence in its ability to withstand even the most sophisticated threats.
These are very important proof points, especially as the main challenges our customers face include those relating to legacy infrastructure, integration complexity, and the persistence of human error, each of which presents hurdles to successful zero trust adoption. By working in close collaboration with our partners and DOD stakeholders, however, we are helping to address these issues and accelerate shared progress towards the 2027 implementation target.
