At the forefront of the Digital Information Age evolution
Unrivaled security,
data and infrastructure experience
As founder and CEO of FWC Consulting, Bill Conner helps organizations through his expertise in
cybersecurity, SaaS, data networks, M&A, marketing and sales. A corporate turnaround and cybersecurity
expert, Conner has been at the forefront of the evolution of the Digital Information Age.
Strategic Maneuvering
Drawing from his experience with Nortel’s Enterprise Data Networks and his time in operations at AT&T,
Conner was intimately involved with the Nortel Data Security startup. In 1998, Conner and the Nortel Data
Security management team took the business unit through an initial public offering, creating Entrust Inc.
Prior to his appointment as President and CEO of Entrust in 2001, Conner held leadership positions on
Entrust’s board and executive positions in Nortel, including Chairman of Entrust’s Board of Directors,
Nortel’s first Chief Marketing Officer, President of Enterprise Data Networks, and President of Enterprise
Networks and e-Business Solutions. In July 2009, Conner and his executive team took Entrust private
through an acquisition by private equity firm Thoma Bravo and sold the company in 2013 to DataCard.
In January 2015, Conner became President and CEO of Silent Circle. In this leadership position, Conner
leveraged his experiences at Entrust, Nortel and AT&T to quickly re-position the company into an
enterprise privacy focused business, bringing secure communications to the enterprise through mobile and
the cloud.
Security Advocate
A strong believer in helping consumers, enterprises and governments to navigate continuous technology and
legal shifts, Conner dedicates time and resources to resolving global, national, and local issues across
these sectors.
Technology Shift
To enable enterprise privacy management capabilities at Silent Circle, Conner built and delivered an
award-winning privacy smartphone, a unified (voice, teleconferencing, data, messaging, video)
enterprise-grade privacy app, and a cloud-based infrastructure, successfully repositioning the company
from consumer to a broader enterprise focused organization.
To expedite success, Conner focused on overhauling the product suite, from a re-engineered device, to
consolidation of disparate security smartphone apps, to creating true “SaaS” enterprise management
capabilities along with a financial reset and corporate restructure.
Upon taking Entrust private, Conner reset corporate priorities to take advantage of new market dynamics in
Digital Identities and SaaS to generate organic growth. This shift began in a time when technology
sectors, cybersecurity in particular, were undergoing tremendous and tumultuous change.
As mobile devices and cloud computing became drivers of organizations’ buying behavior, Conner invested
heavily in technological innovations to help organizations realize the potential gains presented by these
technologies. Conner expanded Entrust’s digital certificate offerings, drawing on his belief in the
strength of digital certificate technology. This culminated in 2013, with Entrust organically growing
cloud and "SaaS" revenue, now accounting for roughly 60 percent of product revenue, and subscription
revenue providing nearly 70 percent of total revenue. Focusing on security solutions for the cloud and
"Saas", Entrust is one of the few software companies to successfully transition from a mainly
perpetual-based model to a subscription-based revenue stream.
Conner’s growing conviction of the massive opportunity and critical need for greater internet security led
him to Silent Circle, where he helped launch its Capture Advanced Threat Prevention Service. This
cloud-based service has analyzed millions of suspicious files for its clients using multiple engines to
help prevent attacks and automatically deploy remediation techniques. With Sectigo, he has been part of
expanding the use of SSL certificates within the exploding growth in online and IoT traffic.
