Apptega’s New SVP of Marketing on Company’s Strategic Outlook

Apptega, a security, compliance, and risk platform for security providers, recently named Ashlyn McLean as senior vice president (SVP) of Marketing to lead the efforts to expand global awareness of Apptega’s security, risk, and compliance management platform.

Channel Insider spoke with McLean about what she brings to the new position and how Apptega plans to help channel organizations boost their cybersecurity posture.

McLean brings two decades of experience in the channel to Apptega as ecosystem grows

McLean brings more than 23 years of experience in channel and partner marketing to this role and will play a key role in growing Apptega’s partner ecosystem.

“I was really excited about this opportunity with Apptega because it brings together my cyber experience – my channel experience in particular – and then of course my overall marketing experience in tech for the past 20 years,” said McLean.

“What is particularly exciting about my background and this opportunity is Apptega’s focus on service providers and channel,” she continued. “They’ve made that shift, and it’s just a perfect opportunity for me to come in and apply what I’ve learned over the years to what they’re looking to do to achieve that next phase of growth.”

McLean has worked with a variety of partners across the ecosystem in her experience, with new ones consistently popping up over the years. This perspective has provided McLean with a unique opportunity to bring key insights to her role.

“There’s been a lot of change, and their needs change along with what the market needs them to do,” McLean says. “Having gone through that firsthand with a number of organizations that are large or small in growth mode, I’ve found that getting to know the partners and where they are is the first step that enables me to anticipate what they might need as the market is changing and their needs to serve their clients change too.”

McLean’s leadership priorities for Apptega: team mindset and a readiness to build

In terms of the leadership priorities McLean wants to bring to Apptega’s marketing organization, it starts with assembling team members with the right mindset.

While having extensive channel and security experience is a plus, McLean says that the teams she’s worked with and led who have the right attitude and are ready to tackle any task are the ones that see the most success.

“A curious mindset is probably the number one thing that I look for in team members that takes people from maybe not knowing that much about the channel or security or what we’re trying to achieve as a company leagues ahead just because they have an innate interest and curiosity to learn more and actually put pen to paper to learn while they’re doing it and contributing to what we’re trying to do,” McLean says.

McLean adds that as she got to know Apptega’s leadership team, she recognized the intentional hiring they’ve done in the leadership positions, focusing on channel experience and depth in working with partners.

“When you’re focusing on the channel or you’re a channel-first organization, it’s really important that the entire leadership team, the entire go-to-market team is thinking in that mindset so that we can cover all functions,” she explained.

Addressing client needs with the Apptega platform

Apptega has started seeing partners recognizing government, risk, and compliance (GRC) shifting from a “check the box mindset” to becoming grounds for end-to-end management of risk in a business and can be much more meaningful to what the business is trying to understand is risk for them.

Apptega wants to address these needs for their clients, and with the work done on the Apptega platform, they will help service providers move from that “check the box” point along the continuum to end-to-end risk management.

“Other trends that we’re seeing are service providers needing help in how to differentiate themselves,” said McLean. “Cybersecurity has always been quite a jam-packed landscape of vendors and service providers are right in there with that. They have a lot of vendors to choose from, and they have to differentiate themselves.”

How Apptega wants to help service providers differentiate in 2026

One item on McLean’s list of what Apptega can do for service providers is helping them differentiate themselves in a very noisy, crowded marketplace through the Apptega platform and its program.

“Another trend that we’re keeping an eye on is mid-market and lower enterprise businesses,” McLean says. “They’re looking for more of what enterprises typically get out of their cybersecurity relationships and solutions. Those customers are also looking for and expecting that kind of experience from their providers, albeit at a better price point that their business can manage.”

Looking forward to 2026, McLean predicts that cybersecurity will remain a crowded, noisy space, with many providers trying to solve the efficiency, scaling, and differentiation problems enterprises face. McLean says it’s Apptega’s job to help enterprises identify the right service providers and vendors to partner with.

McLean reflects on growth of channel and community support

The channel has grown substantially over the last few years, and McLean says that people new to or early in their channel career should embrace the channel and reach out to the community.

“It’s a super strong community with lots of great mentors,” says McLean. “Learn the channel, get familiar with it.”

For Apptega, she says to watch this space, as they have exciting news pending about their platform and continued expansion.

“We are actively working on new offerings for service providers that are going to enable them, help them market themselves, and differentiate in the crowded market,” McLean said. “So watch this space.”

Apptega has looked to bring in strong leadership to help drive its channel ambitions. Read more about the recent appointment of channel veteran Bob Layton as their new chief revenue officer from earlier in 2025.