Iraqi-born, American billionaire software entrepreneur
David Hindawi (Arabic: ديفيد هنداوي; born 1944) is an Iraqi-born, American billionaire software entrepreneur, and co-founder of cybersecurity firm Tanium.[1]
Biography
Hindawi was born on December 8, 1944, to an Iraqi-Jewish family in Baghdad and moved to Israel in 1951.[2][3] After college he served in the Israeli Air Force's Operations Research department.
In 1970, he immigrated to the United States where he earned a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.[2]
In 1984, he founded a telecommunications company, Software Ventures, which was sold to an Internet service provider in 1995.[3][4] In 1997, he founded BigFix Inc, an IT systems management company that was acquired by IBM for $400 million in 2010.[3]
In 2007, along with his son, Orion Hindawi, he founded the cybersecurity firm, Tanium Inc.[2] In September 2015, they raised $120 million in new funding that valued Tanium at $10 billion.[2] Tanium uses an approach to cybersecurity different from its main competitors Symantec and Intel's McAfee which have a central data center that communicates directly with individual computers (and requiring a massive investment in data centers), Tanium instead uses a peer-to-peer system where each computer on a network talks to the computer adjacent to it, pooling data, and then relaying the information in a chain before sending it back to a single server.[3]
In February 2016, Orion took over as CEO from his father, who continued to serve as the company's executive chairman.[2][5]
Personal life
Hindawi is married to Hanna Hindawi and has two children.[2]
References
