Black Hat USA 2026

Benny Czarny is the Founder, CEO, and Chairman of the Board of OPSWAT, a global cybersecurity company securing the world’s most critical infrastructure through a prevention-first philosophy: trust no file, trust no device.

Benny founded OPSWAT in 2002 from a small apartment in San Francisco with a bold vision — to reinvent cybersecurity by focusing on prevention instead of detection. With no outside investment, he bootstrapped OPSWAT from a one-person startup into a global organization with more than a thousand employees, serving thousands of enterprise and government customers in over 100 countries.

Under his leadership, OPSWAT has pioneered Deep CDR™ Technology (Content Disarm and Reconstruction) technology and other breakthrough innovations, including Metascan™ multiscanning, secure file transfer, and advanced sandboxing. These technologies are now trusted to protect mission-critical systems across energy, defense, transportation, finance, and government sectors, helping prevent catastrophic breaches before they occur.

With over two decades of expertise in encryption, vulnerability management, and secure architecture, Benny is recognized as one of the world’s leading advocates for Data Sanitization and Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP). His work has helped shift the global cybersecurity mindset from reactive detection to proactive prevention, positioning OPSWAT at the forefront of protecting the systems that power modern civilization.

As both CEO and Chairman, Benny continues to drive OPSWAT’s long-term strategy, product innovation, and culture of execution. He remains deeply involved in the company’s technology roadmap, guiding its evolution toward a world where every file and device entering a secure network is verifiably safe.

Benny’s leadership style is grounded in curiosity, conviction, and hands-on innovation. From bootstrapping OPSWAT’s first product to leading a global organization shaping cybersecurity policy and defense standards, he has built a company defined not by fear of threats but by confidence in prevention. His mission remains clear: to eliminate cyber threats before they can execute and make prevention the foundation of digital trust worldwide.

Yiyi Miao joined OPSWAT in 2009 as a Software Engineer in the company's Research & Development Engineering Team. Yiyi started managing the Product Engineering and Product Management teams in 2017 and is responsible for the overall product design, engineering, and delivery processes. Yiyi earned a Bachelor's degree in Biomedical Engineering from Shanghai University in China and a Master's degree in Computer Science from San Francisco State University.

Jan Miller brings over a decade of industry experience to his role as Global Chief Technology Officer at OPSWAT. He leads the global CTO office and is the founder and chief architect of MetaDefender Aether.

A cybersecurity researcher, inventor, and serial entrepreneur, Jan has founded and led multiple cybersecurity startups centered around automated malware analysis. Before joining OPSWAT, he was the Founder and CEO of Filescan, which OPSWAT acquired in 2022. Prior to Filescan, he founded Payload Security, the company behind the Hybrid Analysis platform, recognized for its kernel-based sandboxing and memory analysis technologies. Earlier in his career, Jan led development of the Android sandbox and HCA technology at Joe Security and oversaw post-acquisition integration and R&D of the Falcon Sandbox at CrowdStrike.

Jan is widely recognized for contributions to the industry. He is a co-inventor on the European patent EP3814961B1, Analysis of Malware, and has authored technical research on malware evasion, geofencing, fingerprinting, and hybrid analysis. He has contributed to industry publications and serves as a board member of the Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organization, where he is the lead author of AMTSO’s Sandbox Evaluation Framework. Jan holds a degree in Computer Science from Universität Rostock.

Chris Gray is the VP of Sales for Americas at OPSWAT, where he oversees the organization’s planning, implementation, sales performance, and go-to-market strategy for the Americas region.

Chris has more than 20 years of experience in the technology and cybersecurity industry and prior to joining OPSWAT, Chris spearheaded sales initiatives as the Director of Sales at Symantec, VP of Sales at Forcepoint, and most recently as a Strategic Advisor for TheFence and Doppel.

Joe Edwards is the VP Americas Channel Sales at OPSWAT, where he leads the channel strategy and technical pre-sales initiatives across all the Americas. With over 25 years of experience in management, consulting, and cybersecurity, Joe is passionate about helping partners and customers navigate complex security challenges with innovative solutions.

Before taking on his current role, Joe served as VP of Global Sales Engineering at OPSWAT, overseeing pre-sales engineering teams worldwide. He previously founded and led e-velocity technical consulting for a decade and held leadership roles at Cisco, IBM, and Juniper Networks. Joe holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Cincinnati.

Hamid Karimi is the VP of Technology Alliances and Global OEM Sales at OPSWAT, where he oversees the organization’s planning, implementation, sales performance, and go-to-market strategy for a growing ecosystem of OEM partners, serving nearly 200 million enterprise users.

Hamid has over 35 years of experience in the technology and cybersecurity industry. Prior to joining OPSWAT, he held product and sales leadership roles at companies such as Bitdefender and Fortinet.