Executive Management Team

Kaisa Olkkonen - Chief Executive Officer

Kaisa Olkkonen is an experienced leader and expert in international business, legal matters, intellectual property, and digitalization. She has previously been, e.g., VP, Legal and VP, Government Relations at Nokia Corporation.

Kaisa has led international and diverse expert teams through changes and transitions. Her international career has taken her on expatriate assignments in Sweden, Singapore, and Belgium.

Kaisa holds a Master of Law degree from Helsinki University.

She has been Chairman of the Board at SSH Communications Security since March 2016, before transitioning into the CEO role.

Kalle Jääskeläinen - VP, Platform Management

Kalle has over fifteen years of experience in information security services, R&D, and product management. As the VP, Platform Management, Kalle is responsible for delivering customer-driven and high-performance security solutions and services that protect our customers’ critical data and infrastructures. Kalle’s combination of extensive customer-facing experience and technical background is ideal for understanding the market and customers’ challenges, and how those can be resolved in enterprise environments.

Kalle received his Bachelor of Science from the Vantaa Institute of Technology, Finland where he specialized in Telecommunication and Computer networks. Kalle carries a CISSP certification.

Markku Rossi - Chief Technology Officer

Markku brings close to 25 years of software engineering and architecture experience to the company, is responsible for the global R&D, and directs the company’s technology strategy. Markku has extensive knowledge and experience with SSH Communications Security products, having served the company from 1998 through 2005 as a Chief Engineer, leading the contribution to the SSH software architecture.

Prior to rejoining the company in 2015, Markku founded several companies such as Codento and ShopAdvisor, served as CTO at Navicore, Chief Architect at Nokia, and is currently member of the board at Codento and partner at Prominda Revolution.

Markku holds a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from the Helsinki University of Technology (Aalto University) in Finland.

Jussi Mononen - VP Business Development

Jussi is a seasoned growth company executive who has been CEO and founder of several venture-backed companies. He has nearly 30 years of management and consulting experience from international technology-intensive businesses with a sound understanding of strategy, communications, operations, processes, and critical success factors. He also has a strong track record in fundraising and M&A transactions.

Helena Kukkonen, Chief Financial Officer

Helena brings more than 20 years of experience in financial and management accounting and reporting, finance process, and systems development. She is responsible for financial management, treasury, human resources, corporate development, and corporate governance. She also acts as a secretary to the Board of Directors.

Prior to joining the company in September 2016, Helena held several senior financial management positions at Microsoft Corporation and Nokia Corporation. She headed finance and control functions on group and business unit level for a global large scale company, as well as global functional finance teams in manufacturing and supply chain area, including mobile phone factories worldwide.

Helena has a Master of Science in Economics degree from the University of Vaasa, Finland.

Tatu Ylönen - Founder & SSH Fellow

Tatu Ylönen is a well-known leader in the field of cybersecurity with over twenty years of experience. He is the original inventor of the Secure Shell (SSH), the most widely used security protocol for accessing computers remotely in a safe way. He is the lead author of NIST IR 7966, the definitive guideline for managing SSH keys. He holds more than thirty US patents on cybersecurity and computing technologies.

Mr. Ylönen founded SSH Communications Security in 1995, grew the company to $20 million in sales and 190 employees in five years, and led the company to a public listing on NASDAQ OMX Nordic in 2000.

Mr. Ylönen holds a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from Helsinki University of Technology.

In his current role, he focuses on forward-looking initiatives to advance cybersecurity and access management and helps create awareness about the problems the company solves. He is also actively involved in strategic research and development initiatives and still writes code.

For more information, see his personal page.

Chris Riley - President, US Operations & VP Marketing

Chris has worked in IT and information security for 21+ years. More specifically, his experience in markets for identity assurance, data security, governance and risk management is extensive. At SSH, Chris is responsible all US business operations including sales, customer success and marketing. Chris is passionate about the work being done by SSH customers and associates around governance for trusted access and how that makes the world a safer place given the evolving threat landscape. Prior to joining SSH, Chris spent 11+ years at RSA Security in various leadership roles around enterprise sales and customer success. Chris is a graduate of Merrimack College in North Andover, MA where he majored in finance and minored in economics. He also holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Northeastern University in Boston.

Rami Raulas - VP Sales, EMEA & APAC

Rami is a seasoned Sales Leader with several international leadership positions in Sales & Business Management, Marketing and Product Management in global companies. He has been developing and leading regional and global sales teams in multiple companies for successful sales growth and customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Rami is experienced in go to market strategies and implementations and channel partner management. Rami has been working in management positions in Finnish, Asian and Global companies including Nokia, ICL, Fujitsu, Fujitsu-Siemens, Ahlstrom. He holds a Master of Science degree in strategic marketing, business economics and computer science from Helsinki School of Economics (Aalto University).