Binary Defense Taps Dennis Hon as CEO to Lead Channel Shift

MDR and enterprise security vendor Binary Defense today announced it has appointed security veteran Dennis Hon as its new CEO.

Hon joins the team as it shifts to a channel-first GTM approach

Hon was mostly recently the CRO at Red Canary, where he “spearheaded go-to-market operations that delivered 2.5X ARR growth, consistently achieving record quarters,” according to the company.

He brings over 20 years of experience scaling high-performance sales organizations at Okta, Oracle, and other leading technology firms, where he drove billions in revenue growth.

“The one thing that really appealed to me was the level of respect [Binary Defense] has in the cybersecurity community,” Hon told Channel Insider ahead of the announcement. “The level of expertise here is second to none, and I love the philosophy and the hacker mentality the team takes to getting ahead of the curve.”

Hon joins Binary Defense as the company plans to shift its GTM approach to reflect a “channel-first” strategy. To Hon, this means bringing additional value to customers through its partners as the company begins to embrace the platform approach to cybersecurity.

“When it comes to partnerships, you’re delivering value to customers through those partners, and so you need to make sure your technology is complementary to those partners,” Hon said. “This is a natural evolution for Binary Defense as it moves to a more consolidated platform approach. As we add functionality, we’re focused on ensuring we have the right partners moving forward.”

AI-enabled SOC and other product innovations also coming to Binary Defense

In the same announcement, Binary Defense also announced product enhancements slated for release in Q4 of this year. The company says its approach to AI is to see it as a “force multiplier” in the value driven by humans throughout security processes.

New features include:

• Adaptive threat assessment: An internally developed system that uses human-in-loop learning to assess whether alerts represent real threats, explain how attacks are unfolding, and continuously strengthen models with analyst feedback.
• AI-driven investigation assistant: An interactive tool that lets customers search, summarize, and investigate alerts in natural language, turning complex security data into clear, actionable insight in seconds.
• Enhanced BDVision: Expanded deception and disruption tactics, now with AI-powered behavioral threat detection to stop malware and threat actors earlier in the attack lifecycle.     

“Next-gen MDR isn’t about doing more of the same – it’s about redefining the SOC through modern innovations, where automation, advanced analytics, and AI all come together to transform how threats are detected and stopped,” said David Kennedy, co-founder and chief hacking officer at Binary Defense, in a statement. “Dennis brings the vision and operational expertise to scale that transformation for our customers and partners.”

Hon says the evolving partnerships approach and AI products strategy are two of his top priorities as he joins the company.

“We’ve got to make sure we’re doing the right things with AI,” Hon said. “I really like the way Binary Defense is approaching AI and productizing, in a sense, the experience of over ten years of threats and expertise, and bringing that to our customers with these tools. We have to work through how to make agentic AI useful for our customers.”

“I hope people see me and know I’m looking to ensure that out of all of the technology, solutions, partnerships, and everything out there, Binary Defense is putting out the right solution at the right time for the industry,” added Hon.