Netherlands, September 2025 – Dawnguard has announced the appointment of Sarah van Lavieren as its new Chief Operations Officer (COO). Bringing a rich and diverse background in IT operations, infrastructure, cybersecurity, and technical program management, Sarah steps into this leadership role to help steer Dawnguard’s operational excellence during its next phase of innovation and growth.
Prior to joining Dawnguard, Sarah served at Microsoft for nearly five years, most recently as Datacenter Technician Manager, where she was responsible for overseeing complex hardware implementations, zero-trust networking projects, and infrastructure lifecycle management across critical datacenter environments. During her tenure, she also held a Technical Program Manager internship role, where she led multiple automation and cross-functional process optimization initiatives, enhancing operational efficiency at scale.
Earlier in her career, Sarah worked as an IT Consultant with Lavisoft, executing high-impact risk management projects and delivering strategic cybersecurity recommendations to enterprise clients. She was also responsible for delivering training programs and assessments aligned with evolving technologies and operational best practices.
Before her consulting career, Sarah served as an IT Specialist (Tier 3) at Boeing, where she led regional IT operations across the EU, delivered infrastructure projects aligned with compliance mandates, and managed critical data and network systems to enhance reliability and performance.
In her early professional journey, Sarah held several managerial roles in the food and hospitality industry at TGI Fridays, Pizza Hut, Gameday, and Fox’s Pizza Den, where she developed deep operational and leadership capabilities. Her efforts consistently improved profitability, reduced costs, and enhanced team performance through structured training, technology enablement, and data-driven decision-making.
Sarah also served as IT Support Specialist Tier 2 at Salem University, where she managed user support, network upgrades, Active Directory operations, and campus-wide IT training. Her background in education technology support laid a strong foundation for her technical and operational leadership in the years that followed.
About Dawnguard
Dawnguard is redefining the cybersecurity landscape with its pioneering shift-left security platform. Designed to deliver continuous protection from day zero to day 10,000, Dawnguard’s technology enables organizations to embed security seamlessly into the earliest stages of their software development lifecycle. By prioritizing proactive, real-time threat detection and remediation, Dawnguard empowers teams to stay ahead of evolving risks while optimizing performance and compliance. The company is quickly becoming a trusted name in next-generation cybersecurity, delivering solutions that combine automation, resilience, and operational simplicity.
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