About Us
RKVST™ was founded by experts in IoT, cybersecurity, digital identity and blockchain with a vision to overcome the biggest challenge in digital operations: Trust.
RKVST instantly proves who did what when, to bring confidence in critical business decisions
RKVST eliminates the costs, waste and mistakes related to manual or paper-based processes, ensuring the right stakeholders get a reliable copy of critical information in near real time.
Customers use RKVST to provide integrity, transparency and trust for digital supply chains, solving challenges ranging from nuclear waste tracking and compliance in construction and other industries to zero trust connected devices and Software Bills of Materials (SBOMs).
Our Vision
A world where connected systems are resilient in the face of dynamic risk conditions. In other words: digital operations done right.
Our Mission
We enable developers to build, and business users to control, verifiable digital trust between organizations.
Leadership Team
Rusty Cumpston
Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
Rusty is excited to lead RKVST having previously founded Swim.ai and Sensity Systems. Rusty brings a wealth of experience from many successful startups as CEO (XenSource, CloudShield), COO (ONI Systems), VP Engineering (Infinera) and also served on the Board of Directors at Secure Thingz Inc. Rusty graduated from the UNC-Chapel Hill and continues to actively support and work with the College of Arts and Sciences.
Krishna Anne
Co-founder & President
Krishna co-founded RKVST to continue securing Connected Things. Krishna was CEO of Secure Thingz and led its acquisition by IAR Systems. Krishna has over 25 years of experience in the semiconductor and IP industry, holding senior engineering, marketing, and P&L responsibilities at startups and large public companies such as Rambus, Broadcom, AMD, and MIPS. Krishna started his career as a design engineer at DEC working on what would become StrongARM.
Jon Geater
Co-founder & Chief Product Officer
Jon brings his deep expertise in cryptography, cybersecurity, and blockchains to RKVST. Jon held senior global technical roles at Thales e-Security, Trustonic, ARM, and nCipher where he built chip-to-cloud solutions for mobile, IoT, payments, and smart cities while managing large global teams and driving corporate strategy. Jon is a serial leader of open standards at board committee level having served GlobalPlatform, Trusted Computing Group, OASIS, the Digital Twin Consortium, and Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger. He is currently co-chair of the IETF Supply Chain Integrity, Transparency and Trust (SCITT) working group.
Mark Long
VP Finance
Mark is a commercial board level Finance Director with considerable experience working in a financial and commercial environment with particular focus on scaling SME’s to a trade sale. He has held a variety of senior financial positions at Samsung, APW Inc, Invensys Plc, NXP and Jennic and lately as CFO for technology startups Secure Thingz, Faradion and Additive Manufacturing Technologies. Mark is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales and has a Bsc. (Hons) in Finance and Accounting.
John Hartley
VP Engineering
John brings over 20 years of experience in software development for secure applications at nCipher and Thales, with deep working knowledge of chip-to-cloud security. He has designed and implemented a wide array of cybersecurity products including HSMs and Key Management Services. He has led the transformation of agile teams to streamline product delivery. John holds a Bachelors’ degree in Electronic and Electrical Engineering from Sheffield University and is a qualified SAFe 4 Agillist.
Patrick Reilly
VP Sales
Patrick is a sales leader with a proven record spanning 30 years at high tech firms. He plans and executes go-to-market strategy, develops sales and support teams, and achieves growth plans, metrics, and partnerships that create sustainable business. He was VP of Sales for six companies with successful exits, having driven expansion and repeatability of sales at the following companies that were sold to Safenet (Cylink), SAIC (Cloudshield), Cisco (Broadware), Tyco (Proximex), Watchguard (Hexis) and Oracle (Talari).
Liz Harris
VP Marketing
Liz is a marketing and communications leader with more than two decades’ experience of strategic communications in the IT and cybersecurity industry. She has a proven record in start-ups and large organizations, developing and executing global go-to-market and enablement programs that drive pipeline and revenue. Previous to RKVST Liz held senior leadership roles at Entrust, Thales and nCipher.
Cindy Vestergaard
VP Special Projects & External Relations
Cindy brings expertise in how international security regimes, such as the nonproliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons can benefit from distributed ledger technology (DLT)/ blockchain. Cindy is a Nonresident Fellow with the Nuclear Safeguards and Blockchain in Practice Programs at the Stimson Center, previously serving as Director and Senior Fellow. Cindy holds a PhD in Political Science from University of Copenhagen.
Rob Brown
Co-founder & Advisor
Rob co-founded RKVST having foreseen an unmet need to assure information sharing throughout technology supply chains. From marketing embedded hardware security for smart cards at ARM, trusted enclave software for mobiles at Trustonic, and consulting for Ping Identity on IoT, the biggest challenge for users is still knowing what risks are introduced when relying on someone else’s data. That’s a problem solved with RKVST. Rob has a BEng (Hons) in Electronic Engineering.
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Recent Posts
Tracking the transport of radioactive sources with blockchain
This week, Australian authorities recovered a tiny capsule, just 6mm x 8mm (0.24 x 0.31 inches) along a 900km section of Australia’s longest highway, the Great Northern Highway. The pea-sized capsule was a radiation gauge containing…
Turning raw data into golden evidence: the magical power of attestation
What’s in a name? Attestation vs data, claim, statement, etc There are already so many words and concepts in information security: why do we need another one? And indeed ‘attestation’ is already used in several industry…
Ridgeline Founder Stories: Rusty Cumpston and Jon Geater of RKVST aim to weave trust into digital supply chains
When it comes to supply chains, people used to establish and maintain trust manually. Now in the digital age, as we move towards globalization, that’s no longer scalable nor reliable. Rusty Cumpston and Jon Geater saw an opportunity to…