Tampa tech investment firm hires cybersecurity expert

Tampa-based SCP&CO, an investment firm focused on emerging technology, named cybersecurity expert Karim Hijazi managing director and general partner.

Hijazi joins the firm after working as a cybersecurity senior executive and entrepreneur, and he founded several startups in the field of cyber-related threat intelligence. As SCP&CO’s new managing director, Hijazi will support the firm's expanded focus on emerging technologies and platforms, focusing on opportunities associated with cybersecurity, the firm says.

Hijazi will also work on new authenticity technologies to counter the growing risks and disruptive potential posed by rapidly evolving capabilities such as artificial intelligence. Hijazi will work with the firm’s fund managing director, Chris Pizzo, in creating a new investment strategy centered around these technologies.

"Karim is one of the world’s leading authorities on cyber risk and threat intelligence," says Rivera, president of SCP&CO. "He will play a key role in developing our investment strategy for the emerging field of authenticity technologies, which will be increasingly vital for businesses and consumers amid the massive changes now underway in AI, cybersecurity and Web3."

Hijazi has worked in cyber intelligence and counterintelligence industries for 25 years and served as a contractor for the U.S. intelligence community, as well as a cyber-threat analyst to the oil-and-gas industry. In 2013, Hijazi played a key role in putting together a report that conclusively linked the People's Liberation Army of China to widespread cyber espionage activity against U.S. interests, according to his company biography.

Hijazi will be a keynote speaker at the MENA Information Security Conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in September, the firm says.

As a private investment fund, SCP&CO has completed more than 100 transactions in the last 20 years, totaling $2.2 billion of aggregate transaction volume, the firm says. That included more than $255 million of principal and advisory transactions in the technology industry alone, according to a news release from SCP&CO.