Former DHS CIO John Zangardi Named to Acceptto’s Technical, Strategic Advisory Board

John Zangardi, president of data science company Redhorse and former chief information officer at the Department of Homeland Security, has joined the technical and strategic advisory board of Portland-based access management technology maker Acceptto.

Zanguardi, who also serves as a board member at Qualys, brings over three decades of government experience to his new role, Acceptto said Wednesday.

He assumed his current position at Redhorse in June and previously served as a senior vice president at Leidos where he oversaw the company’s strategic relationships and business initiatives.

He served as CIO of DHS from 2017 to 2019 and assumed an acting CIO role at the Department of Defense in 2016.

Earlier in his career, Zangardi spent over eight years at the U.S. Navy in leadership roles such as deputy assistant secretary and acting CIO.

Shahrokh Shahidzadeh, CEO of Acceptto, said Zangardi’s experience leading efforts to streamline the authority to operate process and implement cloud technologies will help the company as it works to expand its footprint in the public and private sectors.

Acceptto offers “no-password” identity authentication platforms designed to support post-authorization security of personnel across an enterprise. The company's It'sMe tool was recently certified for analytics-centric authentication by Gartner.