Teradata Appoints Ken Ricketts as Chief Information Security Officer
"As the impact of AI accelerates across industries, securing AI-driven systems and ensuring data integrity will be our core mission"
Teradata has appointed Ken Ricketts as Senior Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer, effective January 2026. The move comes as the analytics leader accelerates its cloud and AI platforms.
He will oversee cloud and AI-driven platform security, risk and compliance, product security, and operational security, while driving a secure product lifecycle and building a modern, risk-based governance program across the enterprise. Teradata is framing his role as one that enables innovation, not just guards against threats
Ricketts brings more than two decades of cybersecurity experience to the role, with deep expertise across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. His career spans cloud-native organizations, hypergrowth environments, and complex global enterprises, giving him a breadth of perspective on what it takes to build and scale security programs that hold up under real-world pressure.
Most recently, Ricketts served as CISO in Residence at Insight Partners, advising a portfolio of companies on security strategy, compliance, and go-to-market approaches. Before that, as CISO at Coupa Software, he built and scaled a global enterprise security organization across multiple geographies, led the company through FedRAMP authorization and managed complex 24/7 security operations and incident response programs at scale.
Earlier in his career, Ricketts held leadership roles at SurveyMonkey, where he combined infrastructure and security expertise to migrate the company to public cloud while protecting what was then the world’s largest SaaS survey data platform.
He also held senior positions during hypergrowth phases at Monster and IBM Global Services. He holds a BS in Business Administration from UC Riverside. Ricketts reports to COO Mike Hutchinson and will champion Teradata's enterprise-wide security vision.
Teradata’s Chief Operating Officer Mike Hutchinson said, “Ken’s experience in embedding security into enterprise operations and technology development makes him an exceptional fit for Teradata. As AI becomes increasingly central to enterprise innovation, Ken’s leadership will ensure that security is not only a safeguard but a strategic enabler. His ability to combine technical depth with forward-thinking vision will strengthen our security posture and empower customers to innovate confidently.”
Ricketts echoed that framing in his own statement, centering the role’s mission on customer trust and business growth rather than purely defensive posture. “There is no more important mission than protecting our customers’ data,” he said. “As the impact of AI accelerates across industries, securing AI-driven systems and ensuring data integrity will be our core mission. By embedding security into every aspect of our operations and product lifecycle, we will enhance trust and deliver secure, responsible innovation for our customers worldwide.”
The appointment aligns with Teradata's aggressive cloud/AI modernization. Recent platform updates emphasize trusted AI governance, secure data pipelines, and compliance-ready analytics. Areas where Ricketts' FedRAMP experience proves invaluable.
Enterprises adopting AI at scale face unprecedented risks like model poisoning, data leakage, adversarial attacks. Ricketts' operational security expertise positions Teradata to lead secure AI adoption, differentiating from analytics rivals.