Veeam’s Janet Docherty takes on Palo Alto Networks’ regional channel leadership

Janet Docherty (Palo Alto Networks)

Former Veeam Software Australia and New Zealand channel sales director Janet Docherty has taken on the role of Palo Alto Networks' commercial and channel sales director for the Asia Pacific and Japan (JAPAC) region.  

The move comes after more than two years with Veeam, with Docherty being appointed as the backup, disaster recovery and data management software vendor’s head of channel sales for A/NZ in May 2019. 

Her appointment followed predecessor Belinda Jurisic’s promotion to the then newly-created role of Asia Pacific and Japan channel director, which she oversees from Singapore. 

At the beginning of July, it was revealed that Forcepoint’s former regional director for the local market, Klasie Holtzhausen, had been named as Veeam’s new director of channel sales across Australia and New Zealand, replacing Janet Docherty in the role. 

Now, Palo Alto Networks has confirmed Docherty’s appointment as its new director of commercial and channel sales for the region.  

Based in Brisbane, Docherty comes to the role with a wealth of knowledge in leveraging partners and distributors to build a commercial business, a spokesperson for the cyber security solutions vendor told ARN.  

Docherty joined Veeam from Veritas, where she spent four years in senior channel sales roles. Prior to that, she spent eight years at Symantec and three at Data#3 during a two-decade IT career.  

In April, Palo Alto Networks revealed it was putting a new cyber security consulting group together, under the expanded Unit 42 banner. The group combines former Crypsis security consultants with its Unit 42 research team, coming under the leadership of Wendi Whitmore. 

Palo Alto purchased incident response, risk management and digital forensics consulting firm The Crypsis Group for US$265 million in August last year.

The Unit 42 consultancy has been set up to offer a set of services to help organisations rapidly respond to threats, as well as proactive services that complement the Palo Alto product set, tackling complex cyber threats from ransomware through to state-sponsored espionage. 

The consulting group also expands incident response services into Asia, Europe and the Middle East. 

“Our increasing reliance on technology has turned cyber security into an existential matter,” said Wendi Whitmore, senior vice president of cyber consulting and threat intelligence at Palo Alto Networks. “We wake up every day focused on collecting and analysing the most up-to-date threat intelligence and applying our analysis to respond to cyber attacks.”