Meet the Team

Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Florin Talpes is a visionary technology entrepreneur who together with his wife Mariuca, founded one of the first private software companies in post-communist Romania that grew to become Bitdefender. Under his guidance Bitdefender has become a global leader in cybersecurity with millions of customers worldwide. Dedicated to expanding regional IT innovation and growth, Mr. Talpes co-founded the National Association of Software Services Industry that has been instrumental in helping Central and Eastern Europe become a technology hub. Mr. Talpes was recognized as a “Most admired CEO in Romania” by leaders of the business community published in the weekly Business Magazine. Mr. Talpes has a degree in mathematics and a master’s degree in operator’s theory from the University of Bucharest.

As Bitdefender Chief Financial Officer, John Stynes leads financial operations and strategic direction for the company. He joined Bitdefender in 2019 and brings more than 20 years of experience in executive positions at leading global public companies including Verifone, TT Electronics and Cisco. Based in London, Stynes is focused on guiding the company’s growth while driving financial transformation and providing strategic business insights.

Bogdan Irina is responsible for Bitdefender's global business operations. As one of Bitdefender's first employees, he has been instrumental to Bitdefender’s growth and strategic direction. Irina has led both technical and commercial teams and has been a part of Bitdefender's senior management team for more than 10 years. Irina’s extensive experience in the IT industry, business development, and planning and strategy has helped Bitdefender become a globally recognized brand. Irina holds a degree from the Romanian-Canadian Master of Business Administration Program.

Bogdan Dumitru spearheads Bitdefender’s technical innovation leading a team of more than 400 researchers, developers, and engineers. Dumitru has been instrumental in the development of Bitdefender’s industry-leading security technology that consistently wins awards and leads independent tests for prevention and detection of advanced threats. Dumitru joined Bitdefender to pursue a passion for cybersecurity and under his leadership Bitdefender holds hundreds of patents for technical innovation. Prior to Bitdefender, he developed an antivirus solution called Sherlock Holmes AV. Dumitru is a graduate of the Mathematics University of Bucharest.

Rares Stefan is responsible for overseeing Bitdefender’s product portfolio and product positioning strategy. Prior to joining Bitdefender, Stefan was the founder and chief scientist at Third Brigade (which was acquired by TrendMicro), where he focused on the commercialization of multi-platform HIPS as well as researching network introspection, hypervisor-based network and VM security and security event correlation systems. Stefan attended Concordia University receiving a B.Sc. Honours, in theoretical physics with a minor in computer science.

Steve Kelley is a cybersecurity veteran with 20 years of experience in the enterprise security market – primarily in go-to-market roles – with a proven track record of revenue growth, market leadership and innovation. Kelley joined Bitdefender in July 2020 as president and general manager of the Business Solutions Group and is responsible for the growth and strategy of Bitdefender’s enterprise security business. Kelley leads a global team of more than 500 cybersecurity-focused professionals to address the dynamic, ever-changing security requirements of enterprises globally. He holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a BBA from the University of Notre Dame.

Matthew Selheimer is an accomplished marketing executive with more than two decades of experience in cybersecurity, IT operations and enterprise applications across marketing, sales, business development, and technical roles. He joined Bitdefender in 2021 as senior vice president of marketing for the Business Solutions Group responsible for all marketing functions and teams globally to drive awareness for the company’s industry-leading products, managed services and partner programs. Selheimer holds an MBA from Texas A&M University and a BA from the University of Pennsylvania.

Andrei Florescu is responsible for the product strategy, roadmap, and development of Bitdefender GravityZone, the enterprise cybersecurity platform. Florescu leads a global team of cybersecurity experts who design, develop and deliver to market innovative solutions for endpoint security, cloud workload security, and managed detection and response. Based in Texas, Florescu has spent more than 12 years at Bitdefender in various product and customer-facing positions and spearheading product management initiatives. Florescu attended the University Politehnica Bucharest and has degrees in electrical and telecommunications engineering.

Monika leads the charge to ensure that people and businesses around the world know the Bitdefender name, and the wealth of security knowledge and innovation the company has to offer. With over 20 years in the industry, she has worked at both startups and large organizations like Intel Security/McAfee, Cisco and HP, and has introduced several new technologies, products, programs and companies to the market. Her passion for protecting the home and sharing technology with businesses draws from her early career managing IT teams. Monika holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of New Hampshire system.

Harish Agastya leads the Enterprise Product Management, Product Marketing, Services and Market/Competitive Intelligence teams. Prior to joining Bitdefender, Harish Agastya was Chief Marketing Officer at cloud securitycompany Dome9. Prior to that, he held executive roles in product marketing and management at other security companies such as Trend Micro and CloudPassage. At Trend Micro, Agastya notably played an instrumental role in the growth of Trend Micro’s virtualization and cloud security business, including the flagship Deep Security product line. Before his work with Trend Micro, he also held key roles at HP, Oracle, and several Silicon Valley startups. Agastya has an MBA from UC Berkeley and an MS in Computer Science from Penn State.

Mihaela Paun is an accomplished marketing executive with an innovative and results-driven approach, focused on leveraging marketing transformation in digital marketing and sales to drive awareness and enhanced market share for the consumer portfolio. Paun has been instrumental in driving growth for Bitdefender’s consumer business for nearly 20 years. She is one of the founders of Bitdefender’s digital marketing division and the leader of the direct-to-consumer operations, the main distribution channel of Bitdefender cybersecurity, privacy and IoT solutions to home users. Paun holds an MBA from the Academy for Economical Studies of Bucharest.

Ciprian Istrate has been an integral part of Bitdefender in various management roles since 2001. Istrate’s leadership and contributions have helped position Bitdefender as a leader in the global cybersecurity industry. He is responsible for shaping the vision and execution for both Consumer Product Portfolio and Smart Home Cybersecurity Platform (IoT). He holds a bachelor’s degree in electronics and telecommunication and a degree in economic engineering, both from the Polytechnics University of Bucharest.

As Vice President of Engineering, Florin Virlan is responsible for the strategy and operational management of engineering for the Consumer Solutions Group. By applying engineering processes and methodologies based primarily on agile and lean software engineering, Virlan’s team continues to deliver operational excellence. He played a critical role in developing the technologies for the IoT home cybersecurity solution, Bitdefender BOX. Virlan holds a degree in electronics and computational systems from the Polytechnics University of Bucharest.

Catalin Cosoi leads Bitdefender’s cyber-intelligence team tasked with helping local and international law enforcement agencies fight cybercrime. Cosoi has been instrumental in Bitdefender’s work fighting ransomware and his team has assisted law enforcement with the apprehension of some of the most notorious ransomware actors. Cosoi is a frequent speaker at conferences and within security industry on security topics and investigations. With a bachelor’s degree in bioengineering and machine learning, and a PhD in natural language processing, he specializes in pattern extraction and recognition technologies, with a focus on neural networks and machine learning. He’s been granted six patents and a series of classification technologies that have been implemented into Bitdefender software.