CyberOwl Promotes Russell Kempley to Chief Executive

[By: CyberOwl]

CyberOwl, a DNV company, and a global leader in cybersecurity operations for maritime and offshore assets, has appointed Russell Kempley as Chief Executive Officer. Kempley joined in 2020 as Chief Security Officer and most recently served as Chief Propositions Officer. He took up the role in August 2026, succeeding co-founder Daniel Ng, who is stepping down to start a new venture but remains a Strategic Advisor.

The appointment is part of a wider expansion of CyberOwl’s leadership as shipping enters the next phase of vessel and operational technology cybersecurity maturity:

• Antonio Cassidy joins from maritime penetration experts, Pen Test Partners, and takes the role of Director of Services, expanding and scaling CyberOwl’s managed security operations centre, customer services and service portfolio development.
• Richard Wagner expands his role as Global Head of Sales, doubling the size of the sales team and developing growth in new markets. Dennis Teo, previously Satcom Global, Inmarsat Maritime and Wilhelmsen Group, joins the sales team working with Wagner to accelerate growth.
• Vassilis Gklegkles expands his role to lead on Partnership Enablement, as CyberOwl has developed a network of partnerships including Anglo Eastern Ship Management, AST Networks, The Swedish Club and Waterway IT. Three further partnerships are soon to be announced.
• Fariza Mohamedsha steps up into the role of Head of Product, leading the work to extend and deepen OT security coverage, bring third-party security tooling into a single fleet view, extend further AI automation and make it even simpler to deliver evidence operators need for IACS E26, NIST and vetting regimes.
• Sam Barrow joins as Head of Marketing, with a focus on expanding CyberOwl’s role in educating the sector and thought leadership. Barrow brings more than 25 years’ experience in marketing and content development for organisations operating in technical, regulated domains.

Reflecting on the state of maritime cyber security, Kempley said “most shipowners have produced a cyber plan. Far fewer can show that it is actually working, or evidence it consistently across a mixed fleet.” Kempley added: “IACS E26 has made that gap impossible to ignore, because it effectively splits fleets into ships designed for cyber and ships that were not. As connectivity matures, operators also want these systems to integrate with everything else on board rather than adding another thing to manage. Closing that gap is the defining problem of the next three years.”

Under Kempley, CyberOwl will pursue three priorities:

• Widen its managed security services to support a full stack of capabilities for operators without in- house security teams and experts to meet growing cybersecurity requirements.
• Build out integrations to become the unifying layer for operational security across all vessels - those subject to E26 and existing fleets by working with the systems already installed rather than replacing them.
• Expand breadth and depth of OT security capabilities, including extending coverage of supporting shipping operators deliver the evidence needed to pass their first E26 audit.

CyberOwl’s platform now processes more than 750 million security events a day from vessels under way. In August, Anglo-Eastern Ship Management announced CyberOwl as its fleet-wide cyber partner, standardising monitoring, incident response and compliance reporting across more than 720 vessels managed for over 100 shipowners. In June, The Swedish Club partnered with CyberOwl and DNV Cyber to bring threat intelligence to around 1,000 insured vessels.

“CyberOwl has grown significantly over the last two years. Shipowners are now asking us for one place to see cyber risk across a fleet and one team to act on it, no matter what firewall, endpoint detection and response technology or managed IT service provider they use,” said Antonio Cassidy, Director of Services. “Delivering that across thousands of vessels at once is an operations problem before it is a technology problem. The work now is scaling the service without losing the maritime expert judgement that makes it worth having.”

“We see shipowners increasingly focused on how solutions can be operationalised in practice, at scale and managed effectively across mixed fleets,” said Ng. “Russell has led the strategy behind the expansion of our products and services. It’s this strength in experience that will ensure CyberOwl continues to be the preferred vessel cybersecurity partner to shipowners worldwide. I am excited to see how he and the wider CyberOwl team, in lockstep with DNV, shape the future.”

“What comes next is different work,” Kempley added. “Dan built the category; the job now is depth of service, breadth of coverage, and the unglamorous reliability operators expect from anything they depend on every day. The changes to the leadership team bring together depth across cybersecurity, shipping systems and the operational reality of delivering vessel cybersecurity outcomes.”

Kempley will host a fireside discussion with Matthias Becker of Anglo-Eastern at DNV’s event during SMM in Hamburg, 1–4 September 2026.