Summer Myatt
Executive Mosaic is proud to induct Bill Rowan, vice president of public sector at Splunk, into the 2023 edition of the Wash100 for his work strengthening Splunk’s cybersecurity and data offerings and his efforts to expand the company’s partnerships with the federal government.
The Wash100 Award is an annual list of the most impactful and consequential executives whom Executive Mosaic recognizes for their invaluable contributions and future potential in the sprawling government contracting sector. This marks Rowan’s fourth Wash100 Award.
Rowan joined Splunk as public sector VP in July 2022 after more than twelve years with VMware, where he most recently served as VP of strategic alliances for government, education and health care.
“Why I wanted to join and what Splunk does are interconnected,” Rowan explained in an Executive Spotlight interview with ExecutiveBiz. “Cybersecurity is not about just one platform — that’s what gets us into problems. We need to have a much more holistic view. When I was making the decision to join the company, I could see that Splunk was very well positioned to help attack that specific problem,” he added.
Rowan took up his post in a particularly challenging era for cybersecurity across the nation. According to a study led by Splunk at the close of 2022, 66 percent of federal organizations are facing difficulties mitigating cybersecurity threats and recovering from attacks, while 52 percent of organizations are struggling to harness data to inform cybersecurity decisions.
“At the core, security is a data problem and organizations are missing a foundational piece of their security strategy when they cannot leverage their data,” Rowan said, commenting on the study’s findings.
To get after these issues, Splunk has worked to elevate its cyber offerings. In September 2022, the company’s cloud service offering achieved the Defense Information Systems Agency’s Impact Level 5 provisional authorization, allowing Splunk Cloud Platform to host controlled unclassified information for government customers.
“Our IL5 accreditation is yet one step in what is going to be a much longer, broader action by Splunk,” commented Rowan in conversation with ExecutiveBiz.
“The government has clearly laid out that they want to see a framework within FedRAMP that allows customers to migrate their data to the cloud,” Rowan said. “We are very excited that we’ve been able to partner with not just civilian agencies, but with Department of Defense agencies to help make that a reality by both the accreditations we have today and the accreditations that are on our roadmap.”
Executive Mosaic congratulates Bill Rowan and Splunk for their recognition in the 2023 Wash100 list, and we look forward to their future impact across the GovCon ecosystem.
Vote for Bill Rowan as your favorite GovCon leader in the 2023 Wash100 popular vote competition! Visit Wash100.com to participate.
