Former Google & Atlassian Security Professional Brings More Than Two Decades of Experience Securing Global-scale Platforms
SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Rippling, a leading business software company, announced the appointment of Adrian Ludwig as Chief Security Officer, bringing to the company one of the technology industry’s most accomplished security leaders.
Ludwig joins Rippling with more than two decades of experience securing global-scale platforms and advising organizations at the forefront of cloud, mobile, and identity innovation. His career has been defined by building security capabilities during periods of fundamental technological shift and transforming security into a driver of product velocity, customer trust, and business growth.
Recruited as a teenager by the U.S. Department of Defense to identify vulnerabilities in cryptographic and networked systems, Ludwig has operated at the leading edge of cybersecurity ever since. He went on to help secure the early web at Adobe and shape the modern mobile security model as Director of Android Security at Google, protecting billions of users worldwide. Later he scaled trust and cloud security as Chief Information Security Officer and Chief Trust Officer at Atlassian. Most recently, as Chief Architect and CISO at Tools for Humanity, he led the development of one of the industry’s most ambitious efforts in privacy-preserving, global proof-of-human identity infrastructure.
“Rippling is redefining how companies run their entire business on a single platform, and that only works if trust is absolute. Adrian has built security for technologies used by billions of people and millions of businesses. As we secure our platform and customers in the rapidly evolving AI era, he understands how to make security foundational to innovation, not a constraint. That is a game-changing capability for our customers and for our company,” said Rippling Chief Technology Officer Albert Strasheim.
At Rippling, Ludwig will lead the company’s global security strategy across product security, infrastructure protection, trust, and risk. His mandate is to ensure that as customers consolidate more of their workforce and business operations on Rippling’s platform, security is a deeply embedded architectural advantage.
Across each of his roles, Ludwig has championed a model in which security is engineered into products as a core primitive, enabling speed, resilience, and trust rather than acting as a gatekeeper. His appointment underscores Rippling’s long-term commitment to delivering security that scales seamlessly with customers, deepening the company’s commitment to an integrated IT and security infrastructure that helps organizations from high-growth startups to the world’s largest enterprises manage devices, identities, and data with confidence.
“Rippling is building one of the most important business systems of record for the modern company. When a platform becomes that central to how organizations operate, security cannot be a layer added later. It has to be foundational to the architecture,” said Rippling Chief Security Officer Adrian Ludwig. “My focus is to make world-class security an invisible, reliable constant for every customer, so they can move faster with complete confidence.”
About Rippling
Rippling gives businesses one place to run HR, Payroll, IT, and Spend – globally. It brings together all of the workforce systems that are normally scattered across a company, like payroll, expenses, benefits, and IT. For the first time ever, you can manage and automate every part of the employee lifecycle in a single system. Based in San Francisco, CA, Rippling has raised $1.8B from the top investors in the world, including Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund, Sequoia, and Bedrock.
Contacts
Deirdre Hussey
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