John is a Managing Partner of WhiteHat Partners, LLC, providing leadership in facilitating information security for our customers. He has an extensive background in information security and has been successful in partnering with companies to achieve both ISO 27001 and NIST 800-53 level certifications. He is a Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) with experience managing global technology audit organizations for fortune 100 companies. Mr. Crites also brings experience as a Chief Information Officer and Chief Information Security Officer through his management of technology organizations supporting global operations.

John is also the founder of the Triangle Technology Executives Council (TTEC), a non-profit organization providing education and executive networking/collaboration for the community of CIO’s and CTO’s in the research triangle region of North Carolina. In this role, John additionally provided the leadership for triangle region CIO’s in graduate student mentoring, technology scholarship programs, CIO panels for entrepreneurs and programs allowing senior business leaders to actively support our military veterans. Prior to WhiteHat, John was the owner and CEO of Triangle WhiteHat Services based in the Research Triangle Park, NC providing infrastructure architecting and information security certification services for companies such as The Fossil Group in Dallas, TX / Shenzhen, China and Network Financial Printing in New York City. John has also held positions as the CIO at RTI International, and as the CEO at the Microelectronics Center of North Carolina (MCNC) and AuctionBlox LLC.

John enjoys golf, boating and scuba diving preferably in the Caribbean islands. In his spare time, he builds furniture, is an ardent student of history and archaeology and is writing a book detailing the adventures of his ancestors and their roles in the development of our nation.