Charles Walton joined Avast in June 2021 to lead the new Digital Trust Services business. His remit is to define Avast’s business strategy, product roadmap, and go-to-market with a focus on innovation that includes a technology and operational partnership model. This new business will deliver value to users and digital business through a digital smart agent end point capability – delivering better digital experience for people and better digital engagement for businesses.
Prior to joining Avast, Mr. Walton was Senior Vice President, Digital Identity Products and responsible for the creation and rollout of a major new global business within Mastercard focused upon digital identity services, known as the ID Service.
Mr. Walton was additionally a co-founder and on the steering board of both the Trust over IP Foundation and the Good Health Pass Collaborative. Previous to that, he was responsible for government related digital identity services within Idemia. Formerly, he was CEO of Toronto-based SecureKey and responsible for the launch and growth of the SecureKey Concierge Network, a federated authentication system based upon bank, mobile network operator, and government collaboration in the Canadian market.
Most of Charlie’s career has been focused on innovation and product development in the information security industry. As COO for Aix-en-Provence based INSIDE Secure, he was responsible for business strategy, product strategy and development, and launch of new security relevant semiconductor products for the bank card, physical access control, and NFC mobile device markets. His early career included the founding of Caradas, a security services company in the bankcard industry; COO at Certco which was the founding ground for the bank security consortium Identrus; founder of the GTE Cybertrust PKI business; and multiple roles in large-scale secure system development at GTE for Navy and NSA in the US.
Charlie holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer and Systems Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic in Troy New York. He currently lives near Boston, MA.
