Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic It is 15 months since Jill Popelka joined cyber security company Darktrace, thinking she was taking a board seat at the then publicly listed British tech group. In June she was appointed chief operating officer and she now holds the top job, after a whirlwind year in which the business was bought out by a US private equity firm.\u201cThere were so many things that we didn\u2019t know that transpired,\u201d she says. \u201cI would have been very happy in the COO role.\u201dIn many ways it was serendipitous the American \u2014 \u201cTexan, if you want to be more specific\u201d \u2014 was already at the company when former chief executive, Poppy Gustafsson, was appointed UK investment minister by the new Labour government.Under Gustafsson, Darktrace, which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to detect possible cyber attacks against companies and monitor their IT systems for vulnerabilities, had expanded rapidly and built a strong reputation for product innovation. But it had been held back by a view among some investors that it lacked the operational rigour to support long-term growth. It had also struggled to disentangle itself from links to its early backer Mike Lynch, the late tech billionaire who was embroiled in a legal battle with US authorities over alleged fraud at Autonomy, the company he sold to Hewlett-Packard in 2011.Gustafsson initially brought Popelka in to strengthen Darktrace\u2019s operational backbone and deepen its US reach. In previous stints at cloud-based software company SAP SuccessFactors and Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, Popelka focused on strategy and customer experience, and became known as someone who could professionalise operations as companies expanded.\u201c[Poppy] hated process because she felt like it stifled innovation,\u201d says the 49-year-old chief executive, a firm supporter of her predecessor. \u201cToday, we\u2019re not going to over-index on process\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009but we are going to apply what helps us scale.\u201dHaving started her career at Accenture, Popelka is well versed in consultant speak. She peppers conversation with strategy shorthand and glances periodically at a whiteboard listing her leadership priorities: customer excellence; an \u201cunmatched\u201d employee experience (she\u2019s written a book on the topic); the systems needed to drive growth.Since taking charge, Popelka has hired commercially minded executives and parted ways with others. She has focused on reducing contract terminations, customer churn and doing \u201csome basic things\u201d to enable growth.That included turning more to third-party vendors that account for the majority of sales in the cyber security space, rather than primarily selling directly to customers.\u201cOur partners [third-party vendors] are still working off an expectation that we don\u2019t appreciate them and we don\u2019t want to work with them, so I spend a lot of time sharing the story\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009that we\u2019ve changed, and we respect our partners and we want to be an 80 to 90 per cent partner-led business.\u201d Darktrace was founded in 2013 in Cambridge by a group of mathematicians and cyber security experts, including former intelligence officials from GCHQ and MI5. It listed in London in 2021 and its share price tripled in the six months after it went public. But ties to Lynch, who led Invoke Capital, an early Darktrace backer, were initially a concern.\u00a0Many of Darktrace\u2019s early employees, including Gustafsson, had worked at Autonomy, an association highlighted in a 2023 short seller report alleging potential accounting errors at the cyber security\u00a0company.The hedge fund claims were dismissed by an independent review but put pressure on Darktrace\u2019s share price and forced it to spend much of its public life defending its business practices and governance procedures.\u00a0One former employee reckons there was some \u201cscepticism about Darktrace along its whole journey\u201d.\u00a0Ultimately, the business was bought out by Thoma Bravo for \u00a34.3bn last year. \u201cThe market was in a really difficult place, and we didn\u2019t have the valuation we knew we could get,\u201d says Popelka of the US takeover.In a dramatic and tragic twist, Lynch, who was acquitted of fraud in a US court in June last year, died months later when his yacht Bayesian sank during a storm off the coast of Sicily.Popelka, who is wearing Darktrace branded socks, insists the back-story is not an issue with customers. \u201cI\u2019ve probably had 50 to 60 customer conversations while I\u2019ve been here. You know how many times Mike Lynch has come up? Zero,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s so far behind us.\u201dShe is now focused on expansion \u2014 tapping into rising demand for cyber security as businesses become greater targets. The company is primed to make more acquisitions, having announced this year a deal to buy UK Cado Security, a cloud-based security specialist.Popelka is keen to tilt further to the US, already Darktrace\u2019s biggest revenue generator, with 35 per cent of the total. For the year to June 2024, the latest available figures before it went private, total revenues were $690mn and pre-tax profit around $70mn.In time, the company\u2019s American owner sees a potential to list it again, this time in New York. \u201cI can see that, sure,\u201d says Popelka. If Darktrace is able to focus on its strategic priorities and \u201cget these things right, that outcome will come\u201d.In a swipe at UK business culture, she notes one difficulty for a technology company in the UK is \u201cjust that aversion to risk\u201d. \u201cWe seem to have a hunger for it in the US. We\u2019re willing to take on risk, as long as there\u2019s a promise for opportunity\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009But [if] it\u2019s not popular to do that in the market you\u2019re in, then it\u2019s a struggle.\u201dPopelka lives in Dallas with her husband and spends one week a month in the UK. She grew up on a farm, an only child to older parents. \u201cMy mom\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009loved me beyond belief. All she wanted was for me to live next door and make grandchildren,\u201d she says. \u201cShe\u2019s not with us much longer\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009I didn\u2019t want to move here [to the UK] permanently until the end of her life. She needs to be my priority. I was hers for a long time.\u201dPopelka\u2019s disposition is distinctly American: she declares she has \u201ctruly the best job in the world\u201d and credits her father for building her self-confidence. \u201cMy dad believed I could be president of the United States\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009Not that I showed some major ambition, but he just believed I could do anything.\u201dThat enabled her to leave her small town and study abroad. Later she lived in Germany and Singapore with her family; she has a daughter in her 20s who is a consultant and a son at university.\u00a0She says her early life on the farm provided valuable experience for navigating today\u2019s volatile business environment. \u201cThere\u2019s an endless stream of things you cannot predict when you are raising animals and taking care of the land\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009You have to be pretty steady to be able to accept the challenges that come to your desk every day\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009you\u2019ve got to have a really good gift for reframing.\u201dDespite her self-assured nature, Popelka cannot help but compare herself to her predecessor. \u201cI\u2019m not polished. Poppy had this incredible polish\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009incredible charisma. Her energy was undeniable, and I\u2019m maybe a little more undulating in some of those ways. I have great energy 80 per cent of time, and I can get frustrated. I\u2019m a total open book.\u201dWhile Thoma Bravo is not \u201cbreathing down my neck\u201d, she says she likes \u201cmoving fast\u201d as the competition in the sector is fierce. But Popelka recalls one time she was pushing for a faster rollout of a project despite her team not being ready. \u201cSomething inside me was like, well, if I keep driving the urgency on the team, they\u2019ll just get more done. They got more done, but not the right things done. So I needed to kind of reprioritise and reset that.\u201dAs a female tech chief executive at a time when many in the sector, and in the US government, are touting the benefits of \u201cmasculine energy\u201d, Popelka is firm on the importance of inclusivity, unlike US President Donald Trump, who she calls \u201cdivisive\u201d.\u201cI sincerely believe leaders are expected to create an inclusive culture. Without belonging, your team can\u2019t grow, cannot innovate,\u201d she says. \u201cI don\u2019t think cultural awareness goes out of style. There\u2019s such incredible value in understanding different cultures around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic It is 15 months since Jill Popelka joined cyber security company Darktrace, thinking she was taking a board seat at the then publicly listed British tech group. In June she was appointed chief operating officer and she now holds the top job, after a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-292450","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292450\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}