Benjamin Harris

Founder & CEO watchTowr

Last Reviewed: September 23, 2026

Executive Summary

Benjamin Harris is the founder and chief executive of watchTowr, a cybersecurity company that continuously maps an organisation’s internet-facing attack surface and validates which weaknesses an attacker could actually exploit. He founded it in Singapore in 2021 after more than a decade in offensive security, and in October 2024 it raised a $19 million Series A led by Peak XV, taking total funding to $29 million. His route to the job is unconventional: a British boarding-school pupil whose parents hoped he would become a musician, he left school without further qualifications and found work as a penetration tester within days, then rose to Technical Director at MWR InfoSecurity and F-Secure. watchTowr’s public research arm, watchTowr Labs, publishes the kind of attention-getting vulnerability work that has become part of how the company sells.

Career Highlights

• Founded watchTowr in 2021 and leads it as CEO; the company says it serves critical infrastructure and Fortune 500 organisations.
• Led a $19 million Series A in October 2024, led by Peak XV with Prosus Ventures and Cercano Management returning, for $29 million raised in total.
• Expanded the leadership team in February 2025 with a Global Vice President of Commercial and a Vice President of Marketing.
• Rose from senior security consultant to Technical Director at MWR InfoSecurity, then served as Technical Director at F-Secure.
• Began his career as a security consultant at Portcullis Computer Security, later acquired by Cisco.
• Reported by PEAK Singapore as a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree in Enterprise Technology.

Professional Journey

Harris describes his own beginnings bluntly. Sent to boarding school at seven, he spent his school years largely in music schools, because the family plan was a career as a professional musician. His real interest was computers, and he has said he tinkered with school networks as a teenager. He left school early and, within about two weeks, had a job in penetration testing at Portcullis Computer Security, a UK consultancy later bought by Cisco.

After a couple of years at Portcullis he moved to MWR InfoSecurity as a senior security consultant and worked up to Technical Director. He then held the same title at F-Secure. By PEAK Singapore’s account, he moved to Singapore around 2015 to build offensive security teams, working with banks, insurers and governments on their security strategies.

He founded watchTowr in 2021. The idea was that attackers had become faster and more persistent than the tools defenders were buying, so the product builds a real-time attacker’s view of a customer’s external footprint and continuously checks which weaknesses are exploitable, rather than producing a periodic list of findings. By May 2023 the company had 23 staff and US$10.25 million raised, including an $8 million pre-Series A. In October 2024 it announced a $19 million Series A led by Peak XV, formerly Sequoia India and Southeast Asia, and described itself as operating from Singapore, London and New York. In February 2025 it added a Global Vice President of Commercial and a Vice President of Marketing to support sales to Fortune 500 and critical infrastructure customers.

Harris also writes for watchTowr Labs, the company’s research blog. His posts there include “We Spent $20 To Achieve RCE And Accidentally Became The Admins Of .MOBI” (September 2024) and research on exploitation of a Fortra GoAnywhere MFT vulnerability (September 2025).

Education

No post-school degree or qualification was found. Harris has said in interviews that he left school early and went directly into security work.