RunSafe Taps Veteran CRO Bob Lyle to Scale Embedded Systems Security

MCLEAN, Va. – January 14, 2026 – RunSafe Security, a firm specializing in the cybersecurity of embedded systems, has appointed Bob Lyle as its new Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). The move signals an aggressive push to capitalize on the surging demand for protecting critical infrastructure, as Lyle brings a formidable track record of steering cybersecurity companies toward lucrative acquisitions and public offerings.

Lyle, a 30-year veteran of the software and high-tech sectors, will spearhead RunSafe’s global go-to-market strategy, sales, and partnerships. The appointment comes on the heels of a $12 million Series B funding round and reflects the company's intent to scale its patented security platform, which hardens software against cyberattacks at both build-time and runtime.

“Bob brings deep expertise in revenue leadership and cybersecurity markets,” said Joseph M. Saunders, Founder and CEO of RunSafe. “His experience scaling revenue at both startups and global technology companies by focusing on customer needs and requirements makes him a strong addition to our leadership team as we continue to grow our customer base.”

A Strategic Hire for an Accelerating Market

The decision to bring in a CRO with Lyle’s background is a clear indicator of RunSafe's ambitions. His career is marked by significant financial and strategic successes. He joins RunSafe from Medcrypt, another specialist in medical device security. Before that, he served as CRO at MergeBase, a software supply chain security provider acquired by Finite State in 2024. Perhaps most notably, he was instrumental in taking Cybeats from its early customer phase to a successful Initial Public Offering on the Canadian Securities Exchange.

Lyle also co-founded Valona Labs, a mobile security startup whose assets were acquired by HMD Global, the home of Nokia phones, in 2020. This pattern of leading companies to major liquidity events makes his appointment less a routine hire and more a strategic maneuver. RunSafe, backed by investors like Lockheed Martin Ventures and BMW i Ventures, is positioning itself for a period of hyper-growth, and Lyle is the seasoned pilot chosen to navigate it.

His arrival coincides with a period of remarkable expansion for the company, which has reported tripling its annualized revenue in consecutive years. The recent funding is earmarked for product development and expansion into European and Asia-Pacific markets, a global campaign that will now fall under Lyle's purview.

The Invisible Front Line of Cybersecurity

RunSafe operates in a high-stakes, often invisible, corner of the cybersecurity world: embedded systems. These are the dedicated computers inside everything from industrial control systems and power grids to medical infusion pumps and military hardware. Unlike typical IT systems, these devices often have lifespans of 10 to 30 years, are difficult to patch, and were frequently designed without modern security considerations.

This makes them a prime target for adversaries. Research indicates that memory corruption flaws—bugs that allow attackers to execute malicious code—are a primary vector of attack, accounting for a majority of vulnerabilities in industrial control systems. RunSafe’s core technology directly addresses this threat by using a patented process to rearrange code in memory, effectively immunizing software from entire classes of memory-based exploits without requiring developers to rewrite a single line of code.

This proactive hardening is critical for sectors where failure is not an option. In healthcare, the FBI has reported that over half of networked medical devices have at least one known critical vulnerability. A cyberattack on these devices can disrupt patient care, as confirmed by 22% of healthcare organizations in a recent study. Similarly, a compromise in an energy or transportation system could have catastrophic consequences.

Navigating a New Regulatory Landscape

The demand for RunSafe's solutions is not just being driven by threat actors, but also by regulators. Governments worldwide are waking up to the systemic risks posed by insecure software supply chains. In the United States, directives from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and standards from NIST are pushing for greater transparency and security.

A key component of this push is the Software Bill of Materials (SBOM), a detailed inventory of the components in a piece of software. The EU's Cyber Resilience Act and new FDA regulations for medical devices now effectively mandate SBOMs. As of 2023, medical device manufacturers must submit a plan to monitor and address vulnerabilities, with an SBOM being a critical part of their FDA filing. This regulatory pressure has transformed SBOM generation from a best practice into a market necessity.

RunSafe’s platform is designed for this new reality, offering an authoritative build-time SBOM generator specifically for the C/C++ projects common in embedded systems. This allows manufacturers in aerospace, defense, and medical fields to not only secure their devices but also meet increasingly stringent compliance requirements, accelerating their path to market.

Proactive Defense in a Reactive World

The traditional cybersecurity model of detecting and patching vulnerabilities is often untenable for embedded systems. Patches can be slow to develop, difficult to deploy across vast and remote networks of devices, and may require recertification, which is a costly and time-consuming process.

RunSafe’s philosophy is to render exploits ineffective from the start. Its runtime protection, known as memory relocation, ensures that even if a vulnerability exists, an attacker cannot reliably exploit it because the memory layout is randomized and unknown to them. This provides a crucial layer of defense for both new and legacy systems, protecting them even when a patch is not yet available. This approach has gained traction with industry leaders like Vertiv, Schneider Electric, and GE Aviation, as well as with the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force.

“I’m excited to join RunSafe at a time when protecting software at runtime is becoming mission-critical,” said Bob Lyle in the company’s announcement. “RunSafe addresses a foundational cybersecurity challenge for embedded systems, and I look forward to helping expand adoption across industries where reliability and security are paramount.”

With Lyle now leading the revenue engine, RunSafe is poised to translate its technological advantage and market validation into global market share, providing a critical shield for the unseen technologies that underpin modern society.