Rapid7 has appointed Simon Ractliffe (pictured) as General Manager for its Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) business, strengthening regional leadership as the company accelerates growth and expands its threat detection and exposure management capabilities.
In the role, Ractliffe will lead Rapid7’s commercial strategy and operations across APJ, with a focus on helping organisations shift from reactive cybersecurity postures to pre-emptive, risk-driven security programs. He will oversee initiatives aimed at deepening partner and customer engagement while supporting organisations to modernise security operations by unifying exposure management with threat detection and response.
Rapid7 said Ractliffe will play a key role in enabling security teams to manage cyber risk with greater speed, precision and confidence, leveraging integrated platforms and automation to reduce time to containment and improve operational resilience.
Commenting on his appointment, Ractliffe said Rapid7 is well positioned to deliver a unified, open security platform that supports customers and partners at every stage of their security journey. He said the long-standing goal of combining business risk–contextualised vulnerability and threat data with automation is now achievable, allowing organisations to reduce response times, manage risk more effectively and strengthen resilience at scale.
The strategy aligns with Rapid7’s recently expanded partnership with Microsoft, which enhances pre-emptive detection and response across Microsoft environments. Rapid7’s managed detection and response service for Microsoft combines Rapid7’s security operations centre expertise with Microsoft’s security ecosystem to identify threats earlier, respond decisively and maximise return on investment in Microsoft Defender while reducing operational complexity.
Ractliffe brings more than 30 years of leadership experience across cybersecurity, cloud and AI markets. Most recently, he served as regional managing director for Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia at Secureworks. His previous roles include regional general manager for Australia and New Zealand at Qualys, general manager for Australasia at IBM, and head of cybersecurity at Singtel.
Rapid7 chief commercial officer Allan Peters said Ractliffe’s deep industry experience and understanding of customer and partner challenges make him well suited to lead the APJ business. He said the appointment supports Rapid7’s continued focus on helping organisations across the region reduce risk earlier, operate more efficiently and build long-term cyber resilience.
