George Kalavantis is a seasoned executive operating at the intersection of critical infrastructure, cybersecurity, and enterprise software, bringing decades of experience leading complex technical organizations through growth, transformation, and high-stakes operational environments.
As Acting Chief Executive Office and longtime Chief Operating Officer of Industrial Defender, he is responsible for orchestrating the company’s core operational engine, including engineering, product management, customer support, and deployment functions, ensuring alignment between innovation, execution, and customer outcomes.
Kalavantis’s career is defined by his ability to translate deeply technical systems into scalable business value. His expertise spans network security, smart grid infrastructure, and regulatory frameworks such as NERC CIP, positioning him as a rare operator who understands both the physical and digital layers of critical infrastructure.
This dual fluency has enabled him to lead organizations through periods of rapid change, including acquisitions, divestitures, and product evolution, while maintaining operational continuity in mission-critical environments.
As part of his leadership at Industrial Defender, Kalavantis held senior leadership roles at Capgemini and Leidos, where he managed multi-million-dollar product portfolios and led cross-functional teams responsible for engineering, product strategy, and customer delivery. Capgemini and Leidos are former owners of Industrial Defender.
At Capgemini, he played a central role in integrating Industrial Defender’s Automation System Manager and related cybersecurity offerings into a broader enterprise portfolio, while also leading the carve-out of Industrial Defender into a standalone entity under private equity ownership. This experience underscores his capability to navigate both the strategic and operational complexities of M&A, ensuring that product vision, organizational structure, and customer commitments remain intact during transition.
Earlier in his career, Kalavantis spent nearly two decades at National Grid, where he was deeply embedded in the operational backbone of the energy sector. As EMS Manager, he led initiatives across SCADA systems, energy management systems, and cybersecurity implementations, supporting the reliability and resilience of power infrastructure across New England.
His work included implementing intrusion detection systems, designing critical infrastructure security gateways, and ensuring compliance with ISO and NERC standards. This foundation in utility operations continues to inform his leadership approach, grounding his decisions in the realities of operators responsible for keeping essential services running. A hallmark of Kalavantis’s leadership is his ability to manage complexity under pressure. Whether overseeing large-scale infrastructure deployments, coordinating cross-functional teams, or driving product innovation, he consistently demonstrates a disciplined, methodical approach that balances technical rigor with business pragmatism.
Beyond operational execution, Kalavantis brings a strategic lens to product development and market positioning. He has led initiatives in new market entry, long-term product planning, and next-generation architecture design, ensuring that technology investments align with evolving customer needs and industry trends. Kalavantis holds both a Master’s degree in Operations and Information Technology and an MBA from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, complementing his technical background in power systems engineering. This combination of education and experience enables him to bridge the gap between engineering detail and executive decision-making.
At Industrial Defender, Kalavantis serves as the operational backbone of the organization, ensuring that the company’s capabilities translate into measurable value for customers. His leadership is defined by reliability, creating the conditions for consistent performance, scalable growth, and sustained trust in environments where failure is not an option.
