George Heron serves as vice president and chief scientist at McAfee, Inc. In this role, Heron leads product initiatives, furthers product architecture development, and drives product research. Heron joined McAfee(R) with more than 30 years of management experience in software and hardware product development. Most recently he was CTO at SafeNet, where he led the company's initiatives for incorporating new products and partners into their product lines of VPN clients, network security appliances, security management and identity management.

George Heron joined SafeNet in March 1999. In this position, George was responsible for developing new and enhanced network security products as well as contributing insight about technology trends and new product opportunities in VPN, Internet and electronic security fields. He specializes in organizational and productivity turnaround management with demonstrated success in bringing new products from initial concept to final product launch. Prior to joining SafeNet, George was a Director of Product Development at Dialogic Corporation, where he was responsible for leading the System Software Development Team. He was responsible for developing telephony-based products for the telecommunications industry and oversaw divisions responsible for client-server product development and advanced system architecture.

George holds a BSEE degree from the Rochester Institute of Technology, an executive MBA from Babson College in Massachusetts and has completed advanced studies in computer science.