# Bill Siegel

> Bill Siegel is the CEO and co-founder of Coveware by Veeam, a cyber-extortion incident-response company founded in 2018. After a career spanning distressed-debt analysis, private-market operations, SecondMarket, Nasdaq Private Market and SecurityScorecard, he brought a finance operator's eye to ransomware: collect case data, test every recovery option and make payment the last resort. Coveware was acquired by Veeam in 2024, and Siegel continues to publish ransomware research and advocate preparation, structured incident reporting and close collaboration with law enforcement.

- **Role:** CEO and Co-Founder at Coveware by Veeam
- **Organizations:** Coveware by Veeam, Veeam Software, SecurityScorecard, Nasdaq Private Market, SecondMarket, The Receivables Exchange, SAC Capital Advisors, M.D. Sass
- **Education:** Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance, University of Michigan - Stephen M. Ross School of Business
- **Known for:** Co-founded Coveware in 2018 and built it into a specialist cyber-extortion incident-response and intelligence company., Led SecondMarket through its 2015 acquisition by Nasdaq Private Market and then headed the combined business., Testified before a U.S. Senate committee in 2022 on ransomware payments, cryptocurrency and mandatory incident reporting.

## Career timeline

- **2002** — Began his career in equity research at M.D. Sass.
- **2006** — Moved to SAC Capital as an analyst.
- **2008** — Joined The Receivables Exchange as SVP of Corporate Finance.
- **2011** — Began running operations at SecondMarket and later served as CEO.
- **2015** — Led SecondMarket when Nasdaq Private Market acquired it, then became head of the combined Nasdaq Private Market business.
- **2016** — Appointed CFO of SecurityScorecard, overseeing operations, finance and people functions.
- **2018** — Co-founded Coveware with CTO Alex Holdtman to collect better ransomware incident data and help victims recover.
- **2022** — Testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs about ransomware, cryptocurrency and incident reporting.
- **2024** — Continued as CEO of Coveware by Veeam after Veeam acquired the company.
- **2026** — Published continuing analysis of cyber-extortion outcomes and Q2 ransomware payment trends for Coveware by Veeam.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Coveware in 2018 and built it into a specialist cyber-extortion incident-response and intelligence company.
- Led SecondMarket through its 2015 acquisition by Nasdaq Private Market and then headed the combined business.
- Testified before a U.S. Senate committee in 2022 on ransomware payments, cryptocurrency and mandatory incident reporting.
- Established a practice of sharing subsets of Coveware incident data with law enforcement from every attack the firm worked, according to his Senate testimony.
- Continued leading Coveware after its acquisition by Veeam in 2024.

## Latest updates

- **2026-07** — Published Coveware by Veeam's Q2 2026 report, arguing that adverse cyber-extortion outcomes occur more often than victims are commonly told.
- **2026-04** — Published analysis on agentic AI and the growing pressure it places on patch velocity, compensating controls and dependency visibility.
- **2026-02** — Published research on why zero-day downstream mass data-extortion campaigns were losing efficacy.
- **2025-10** — Reported that ransom payment rates were falling while threat actors shifted tactics, including toward insider threats.
- **2025-07** — Reported a rise in targeted social engineering and data-exfiltration-driven extortion during Q2 2025.

## Links

- Website: https://coveware.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-siegel
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pGaFvdtJiw

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/bill-siegel
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-08-27