Kara Coppa is the COO & Co-Founder of BL∆KFX. She is a 20 year cyber security veteran from the intelligence, military and financial services industries whose patents and products protect lives, property and empower people. Kara has secured the world’s most critical communications as co-founder of Wickr and is currently on a mission with BL∆KFX to enable the most secure crypto economy in the world.  

With professional experience, spanning the areas of information security governance, threat detection/mitigation, risk assessments, and incident response and investigations, Kara has been a hands-on security expert for various industries. Prior to BL∆KFX, she was the EVP of Cybersecurity Services for SIG Homeland Security where she ran the national defense and cyber resiliency projects related to national security operations.

As COO and Co-Founder of Wickr, Kara created and managed the day-to-day operations, including the development and integration of policies and procedures, financial analysis and projections, budgeting, resource allocation, training, administration, risk management, and information security. She was also a key contributor to the innovation and oversight of technology, security, design, and implementation and co-authored many of the United States patents for Wickr’s underlying security technology.

Prior to Wickr, Kara was Vice President of Global Information Security for a Wall Street financial services firm, BNY Mellon, where she managed the integration of the global information security program for mergers and acquisitions. She was instrumental in building a security threat management program to improve and automate threat detection and response while reducing operational costs and resources, and received an award for her outstanding achievement in 2009.

Kara was also an ambassador to the information security team and provided security awareness training sessions across all business units and acceleration programs. She was accepted into the firm’s Women’s Initiative Network (WIN) mentoring program in 2011 and invited by the COO to participate as one of 20 people in the firm’s first Innovation Think Tank Program in 2012.

Prior to her financial services career, Kara spent several years in information assurance and compliance as a government contractor for the United States Department of Defense. She secured and monitored the network backbone operations center to support the warfighter and thousands of global military users. She also improved organizational readiness with the implementation of formalized incident response plans and procedures. Kara pioneered the first intrusion prevention system (IPS) for the military base and transitioned the backbone protection to a proactive, cutting-edge solution.

In 2007, Kara volunteered her time to work with a team of homeland security, information security, and software development professionals to design and build an innovative and free, emergency alert and communication service – United Alert. She worked closely with the New Jersey Office of Emergency Management, the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security, and Preparedness and the Regional Operations Intelligence Center to train staff and roll out the system as NJ-Alert in 2009. The service was donated to the state of New Jersey and other national and international government entities in an effort to raise awareness and protect lives and property.

Kara held a security clearance from the U.S. Department of Defense and has obtained Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Information Systems. She has been an FBI InfraGard member since 2004 and was a member of the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC) for five years. She has been a Certified Information Security Systems Professional (CISSP) since 2006, a SANS Global Information Assurance Certified Incident Handler (GCIH), a Global Information Assurance Certified Forensic Analyst (GCFA), and holds various industry awards and certifications.