Vinnie Liu has grown Bishop Fox from a living room startup into the largest private professional services firm focused on offensive security testing. The company provides offensive security consulting services to the world’s leading organizations – working with 25% of the Fortune 100, the top five global media organizations, 10 of the top 20 global retailers, six of the top 10 manufacturing companies, and six of the top 10 global technology companies.
Liu has overseen the firm’s rapid growth from three employees to 200, including many of the world’s leading hackers. He’s created a strong infrastructure, built a talented management team, and fostered a loyal, dedicated workforce across offices in Phoenix, Atlanta, San Francisco, New York City, and Barcelona, Spain. He created his own company because he wanted to drive true change and build an organization that would make a difference in the security community. Under Liu’s leadership, Bishop Fox has been named one of the “Top Companies to Work For in Arizona” (Arizona Republic) for six consecutive years (2014-2019) based on its leadership and planning, culture and communications, role satisfaction and supervisor relationship, work environment, training and development, pay and benefits, and overall engagement.
Bishop Fox has been profitable and grown every year since its founding. After 13 years of impressive, self-funded growth, Liu closed $25 million in Series A funding in February 2019 (from top security investment firm ForgePoint Capital) so the company can continue its market dominance and forward-thinking development of the next generation of offensive security technologies.
Well respected in the security community, Liu has built a company with a reputation that is second-to-none – it stands out for its commitment to quality work and for delivering exactly what is promised.
Accomplishments
• Vinnie Liu has grown Bishop Fox from a living room startup into the largest private professional services firm focused on offensive security testing. The company provides offensive security consulting services to the world’s leading organizations – working with 25% of the Fortune 100, the top five global media organizations, 10 of the top 20 global retailers, six of the top 10 manufacturing companies, and six of the top 10 global technology companies.
• In 2019, Bishop Fox partnered with a Fortune 100 technology giant to design their third-party security assessment program, which helps protect partner, customer, and company data by evaluating, at scale, the security posture of their third-party partners. This game-changing program has been rolled out to over 1,000 partners, making it the largest, publicly known third-party ecosystem testing program in the world.
• Bishop Fox has been profitable and grown every year since its founding. After 13 years of impressive, self-funded growth, Liu closed $25 million in Series A funding in February 2019 (from top security investment firm ForgePoint Capital) so the company can continue its market dominance and forward-thinking development of the next generation of offensive security technologies.
About this category: Cybersecurity Professional of the Year
The Cybersecurity Excellence Awards recognize security professionals whose hands-on work or leadership delivered measurable results. The award is open to practitioners in any role and at any kind of organization, including engineers, analysts, consultants, researchers and architects.
An independent jury of security practitioners, analysts and CISOs scores each nomination on leadership, innovation and impact. Each nomination competes in its category against peers in a similar setting and region. Entry packages, sponsorship and public votes do not affect the jury's scores.
Community Choice voting for the 2020 season closed on July 10, 2020.
What is the Community Choice Award?
A separate award decided by public vote, independent of the jury awards. Each completed share of a profile on LinkedIn, Facebook or X counted as one vote.
2027 award season
Nominations closeFebruary 27, 2027
Jury winners announcedWeek of March 22
Community Choice voting closesJuly 10, 2027
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Votes cast by July 10, 2027 will determine the Community Choice winners (independent of the jury awards). Winners will be announced before Black Hat USA.
What is the Community Choice Award? →
Community Choice is a separate award track from the jury-selected Cybersecurity Excellence Awards. Jury winners are chosen by expert judges, while Community Choice winners are determined by public voting. A nominee may be honored by the jury, the community, or both.
2020 winners in Cybersecurity Professional of the Year
To keep judging fair, each entry is judged against peers in its segment, so a category can have more than one Gold winner.
