SentinelOne Buys High-Profile Consultancy Krebs Stamos Group

SentinelOne purchased a boutique consultancy established by two of the world’s most famous security minds and launched its own strategic risk analysis and advisory group.

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The Silicon Valley-based endpoint security firm will add inaugural CISA Director Chris Krebs and former Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos and to SentinelOne’s C-suite through the acquisition of Krebs Stamos Group. SentinelOne said the deal will help organizations address the collision of business and geopolitical risk by providing customers with intelligence, insights and risk management strategies.

“Businesses are operating in uncharted territory,” SentinelOne CEO Tomer Weingarten said in a statement. “In launching PinnacleOne, we are providing access to top experts who can help enterprises think bigger and broader than the siloed approaches of today.”

How Chris Krebs, Alex Stamos Entered the Consulting World

SentinelOne’s stock is down $0.29 – or 1.9% – to $15.28 per share since the acquisition was announced before the market opened Thursday. Terms of the Krebs Stamos Group transaction weren’t disclosed, and SentinelOne didn’t immediately respond to an Information Security Media Group request for additional comment (see: SentinelOne CEO on Wiz M&A: ‘Pure Speculation on Their Part’).

Krebs was the first-ever director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency from November 2018 to November 2020, when he was fired by ex-President Donald Trump for refuting Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud. Stamos is a Sanford University professor and Facebook’s former security chief, who left the social media giant following disagreements over how to combat Russian misinformation.

“Businesses are operating in unchartered territory.”


– Tomer Weingarten, CEO, SentinelOne

The duo teamed up in January 2021 as independent consultants to help SolarWinds coordinate its crisis response and enhance its security posture and policies following the colossal Russian hacking campaign. From that effort, the Krebs Stamos Group was born. The consultancy employed as many as 18 people before laying off a third of its workforce in May to adjust to a shift in client needs, TechCrunch reported.

“Whether we like it or not, technology has changed the world as we know it and it’s probably going to get worse before it gets better. But there is hope,” Krebs said in a statement. “PinnacleOne will provide insight and advice executives can rely on to better understand the threats they’re facing, alongside actionable strategies that enhance their resilience and prepare them for the future.”

What SentinelOne Hopes Will Set PinnacleOne Apart

PinnacleOne will help customers understand who’s targeting them and what they’re after, what their true digital footprint is, how strong their security posture is, and what they need to do to live up to their security responsibilities. The entire KSG delivery team is coming over to PinnacleOne, which supports everyone from security analysts to boards and can help executives navigate the regulatory landscape.

“PinnacleOne is a direct response to our customers increasingly asking for help in solving big picture security challenges, and expands our ability to assist private sector enterprises and public sector organizations,” Chief Customer Officer Eran Ashkenazi said. “Our partners will also benefit from tapping into this expertise to complement the services they offer to their most high-profile clients.”

Going forward, Krebs will serve as president of PinnacleOne and chief intelligence and public policy officer at SentinelOne, while Stamos will serve as SentinelOne’s chief trust officer. In conjunction with the acquisition, Stamos said on LinkedIn that he’ll be transitioning out of his role as director of the Stanford Internet Observatory to focus on teaching and supporting the team’s child safety research.

“[This] is an exciting task during an era of state-sponsored targeting of security firms, increased global regulatory pressure and amazing technological advances, many driven by AI,” Stamos wrote on LinkedIn. “We will continue to support our current clients with the same level of diligence and care while we hone and improve our services with the technical and analytical backing of SentinelLabs.”

Krebs Stamos Group is SentinelOne’s first acquisition since purchasing identity security and lateral movement protection company Attivo Networks for $534.8 million in May 2022. Bloomberg reported in August that Wiz had approached bankers to discuss buying SentinelOne, but CEO Tomer Weingarten called the acquisition rumors “a head-scratcher,” “far from fact” and “pure speculation on their part” (see: Why a Wiz-SentinelOne Deal Makes Sense, and Why It Might Not).