Darktrace Doubles Down on Customer Experience With New SVP Appointment

The cybersecurity AI leader taps industry veteran Amanda Phillips to deepen customer relationships amid rising AI-powered threats.

Darktrace is signaling a decisive shift in its growth strategy: it's not just about innovating in AI cybersecurity — it's about proving its value in the trenches of customer environments. On Monday, the Cambridge-based company announced it has appointed Amanda Phillips as Senior Vice President of Customer Success, a newly expanded leadership role aimed at bolstering how Darktrace supports its nearly 10,000 global customers.

Phillips joins Darktrace at a critical inflection point. The company’s latest State of AI Cybersecurity report shows 78% of Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) are already feeling the heat from AI-powered cyber threats, marking a 5% increase from last year. Against this backdrop, ensuring customers can not only deploy but sustain defenses against evolving attacks has become an existential priority.

“Darktrace is putting the customer experience front and center in our growth journey as we help protect our growing base of almost 10,000 global customers from known, unknown and novel threats,” said Bryce Coté, the company’s first-ever Chief Customer Officer, who was appointed earlier this year. “With Amanda’s expertise, we can continue to make meaningful advancements in the customer experience journey while also providing an unmatched employee experience for our customer success team members around the world.”

The hire cements Darktrace’s broader push to transform customer success from a reactive function into a proactive engine of value realization — a trend sweeping across enterprise SaaS and cybersecurity firms alike.

Phillips brings a formidable track record to the role, having led customer success teams at CyberArk, where she helped elevate the company’s customer satisfaction metrics through enhanced adoption and engagement programs. Her nine-year tenure at McAfee saw her steering enterprise success initiatives and critical account management. The combination of hands-on operational leadership and deep domain expertise in cybersecurity makes her well-positioned to navigate the unique complexities of Darktrace’s AI-driven platform.

“Darktrace plays an essential role in protecting organizations from novel threats and uplifting security teams with its pioneering approach to AI-driven cybersecurity,” Phillips said in a statement. “I look forward to working hand-in-hand with Darktrace’s global Customer Success team to further strengthen the customer experience, while driving product utilization and outcomes that support our customer’s business needs. Together we can help more organizations build cyber resilience.”

Analysts see the appointment as aligning with a broader industry realization: as AI-based threats accelerate, customers are demanding not just technology but tailored guidance on how to wield it effectively. “There’s a growing expectation for cybersecurity vendors to offer more than tools—they need to be partners in resilience,” said Jon Meyers, a cybersecurity industry consultant.

For Darktrace, success may increasingly depend not just on what its AI can detect, but on how seamlessly customers can translate detection into defense. With Phillips at the helm of customer success, the company is betting that a tighter customer connection will drive both retention and differentiation in an intensely competitive market.

The question now is whether Darktrace’s customer-centric strategy can scale at the pace of the threats it aims to neutralize.