Keith Hollender: Empowering Businesses to Flourish in a Cyber-Driven World

Keith Hollender stands as a beacon of excellence in the cybersecurity space. Based in the New York City metro area, he is a visionary leader and a trusted expert, boasting around two decades of expertise. As the CEO of MorganFranklin Cyber, Keith drives innovation and growth through pioneering cybersecurity solutions, empowering businesses to flourish in the rapidly evolving world. With his dedicated, people-first approach, he is renowned as a trusted expert and a catalyst for success in the industry.

The Genesis of MorganFranklin Cyber

MorganFranklin Cyber was born from a simple yet ambitious idea: to create a firm that combines the high-touch service of a boutique with the scale, depth, and rigor of a large consultancy. Keith brought that vision to Pete Schile and Jonah Dimeo, two incredibly talented and trusted business partners.

Together, they identified a clear gap in the market for a firm that blends technical excellence with business alignments, grounded in a culture-first, people-first mindset built on integrity and purpose. What started as a concept quickly became a shared mission, and this collaborative spirit remains at the heart of MorganFranklin’s identity.

The Major Leadership Traits

Keith’s leadership approach has been rooted in servant leadership since day one. He believes that a leader’s role is to empower others, create a strategy, remove obstacles, and set a standard of excellence that inspires people to bring their best. In a fast-paced, high-growth environment, that means listening, making decisions with empathy, and staying focused on delivering tangible outcomes for clients. As MorganFranklin has scaled, transparency, trust, and a people-first culture of shared accountability have proven essential in sustaining both the team and client partnerships.

Nurturing a Leadership Culture

MorganFranklin’s leadership culture is built on a foundation of enablement, adaptability, trust, and shared purpose. Recognizing that change is constant in the cybersecurity landscape. Keith and his team have built a culture that prioritizes these core values, recognizing that success is driven by the collective efforts of a committed leadership team and dedicated business partners.

At MorganFranklin, continuous learning, cross-functional collaboration, and proactive communication are the foundation of how the company operates. By embedding these values into every aspect of its operations, from workflows to the decision-making process, the company has created an agile and resilient culture. At MorganFranklin, leadership isn’t about hierarchy but about how individuals show up for one another and clients, especially when it matters most.

Staying Grounded amid Growth

At MorganFranklin, Keith stays grounded by recognizing that he is not alone. Surrounded by business partners, an incredible leadership team, and his family at home, he knows that the company’s success is a collective effort. This shared commitment and sense of unity make all the difference in navigating the challenges of leading a fast-growing organization.

Keith further prioritizes staying connected with the company’s teams and clients, listening to their perspectives and engaging with them directly. By spending time on both the strategic and day-to-day aspects of the business, he stays grounded in the company’s operations while fostering growth. For Keith, leadership is about collective success and remembering that it’s not about me—it’s about us—helps him stay focused on building a strong and cohesive team.

Fostering Collaboration in Remote Work

MorganFranklin Cyber was built as a remote-first organization, a deliberate strategy to attract great talent and focus on outcomes over location. Flexibility is core to its culture, but so is accountability. The company has invested heavily in a unified collaboration environment that enables its teams to operate with speed and cohesion, regardless of their location.

A foundation of trust, strong governance, and a focus on outcomes ties it all together. While embracing remote work, Keith and his team believe in the power of face-to-face connection. Throughout the year, they create intentional moments, including company events, off sites, celebrations, and Global Collaboration Days, where teams come together, strengthen relationships, and celebrate the work they are building together.

Navigating the Complex Cybersecurity Threats

Every client’s needs are truly unique, and Keith and his team believe in delivering made-to-measure solutions rather than one-size-fits-all answers. However, a common blind spot observed across many organizations is underestimating the effectiveness of their controls. Often, foundational controls are in place but not truly effective, leaving them vulnerable.

The tendency to focus on emerging threats like adversarial AI or supply chain attacks can be misleading if basic security measures are not strong. Without strong identity, visibility, and access controls, advanced defenses are compromised. Cybersecurity today is about staying ready, adaptable, and aligned to the business.

The Latest Trends in Cybersecurity: At a Glance

Keith and his team are closely monitoring several key trends in cybersecurity. One area of focus is argentic AI, particularly as autonomous systems begin making security-impacting decisions at scale. The firm is also exploring how quantum-adjacent threats are reshaping cryptographic readiness, not just post-quantum algorithms, but also how organizations prepare for uncertainty in the next compute era. Another significant shift is the convergence of cyber, data, AI, and operational resilience into a single board-level conversation. This reflects a growing recognition that cybersecurity is no longer about siloed functions like GRC, threat, or IT risk; it’s about how secure and adaptive the entire business can be.

MorganFranklin’s AI and Security practice is helping clients think beyond secure adoption, focusing on lifecycle governance, AI provenance, value engineering, and the intersection of model risk and cyber risk.

The Road Ahead

MorganFranklin’s future is more about growing with intention. The firm is expanding its global reach, deepening its capabilities across cybersecurity, AI, and data, and continuing to invest in the people and culture that drive its success.

The company’s long-term goal is to be the most trusted partner for organizations navigating complexity at scale. MorganFranklin aims to nurture an environment where the brightest professionals thrive, resolving tomorrow’s challenges by pioneering new solutions that create lasting impact for clients. By staying true to its values and consistently showing up with excellence, the firm is building a place where the best minds come together to protect, transform, and future-proof the world’s enterprises, and it is just getting started.