Where Was Nvidia's Security Team? Questions After CEO's Exit
After Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang left the chip maker over questions about his extramarital relationships, attention has turned to what the company's security staff knew. Nothing public links the August change in security leadership to the matter.
Jensen Huang, CEO of U.S. chip maker Nvidia, left the company about two and a half months after its longtime chief security officer stepped down. Huang's departure followed questions about his extramarital relationships, and observers are now asking whether and what Nvidia's security team knew, given the potential national-security risks involved.
What happened
The questions about Huang began with a relationship with an executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore data center company that U.S. investigators suspect of channeling Nvidia chips to China. Reports then emerged of two separate relationships with Nvidia employees. Megaspeed has denied any wrongdoing.
In August, chief security officer David Reber, who spent seven years at Nvidia, four of them as CSO, stepped down. He cited health reasons, saying he was diagnosed with young-onset Parkinson's more than two years earlier. His replacement, Saša Zdjelar, previously worked at ExxonMobil, Salesforce and the cybersecurity firm ReversingLabs. Neither he nor Reber responded to questions, and Nvidia has not answered either. Nothing public connects the changes to the Megaspeed matter.
What the company knew
The New York Times reported that Nvidia's top lawyer was engaged with the government's Megaspeed inquiry more than a year ago. Nvidia says it regularly contacts officials. Citing five Nvidia employees, the Times said Huang was involved with a vice president who reported directly to him; Reuters, citing two people, later reported a second relationship. It is unclear whether any of this reached the security team.
Expert view
Nicholas Eftimiades, a retired senior intelligence officer who says he has trained more than 1,000 corporate security professionals, says affairs can create vulnerabilities that foreign intelligence services try to exploit. Such risks are hard to spot because information is often gathered through everyday conversation rather than hacking. He adds that security teams are often underfunded and that companies tend to define security narrowly. He hopes the episode will be a wake-up call for U.S. industry.
What the security team knew, and whether it could have acted, may become clearer as the board's independent investigation and federal inquiries proceed.
