Patrick Heim, chief information security officer of Kaiser Permanente, and Robert Mandel, vice president of health care services at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, have joined the executive council of the Health Information Trust Alliance (HITRUST), based in Frisco, Texas. Next year, the group plans to release a framework that organizations can use to securely create, access, store and exchange personal health and financial data.

Symplified, a Boulder, Colo.-based provider of on-demand identity management solutions to enable Enterprise 2.0 to adopt cloud computing, has appointed Jason Merrick vice president of business development. He will be charged with building and managing partnerships for Symplified's open identity and security ecosystem. Previously Merrick served as vice president of worldwide technical sales at wireless security firm AirTight Networks, based in Mountain View, Calif.

Damballa, provider of botnet security solutions, named Kevin O'Connor vice president of sales. He brings more than 20 years of sales and marketing experience, most recently running worldwide sales efforts at Nevis Networks and Reflex Security. He also served as area sales VP at Internet Security Systems.

Rapid7, provider of unified vulnerability management solutions, has secured $7 million in funding from Bain Capital Ventures. The company will use the cash to expand its global sales channels and expand marketing and management staff. It also appointed former Microsoft executive Mike Tuchen as president and COO, as well as Timothy O'Toole as the company's CFO.

The Internet Security Alliance (ISA), an information-sharing forum, has launched a program to create security best practices for using voice over internet protocol (VoIP). The goal is a checklist of vulnerabilities and a security baseline for organizations wishing to deploy internet telephony.

StillSecure, provider of network infrastructure solutions, will offer a rebranded version of its network access control (NAC) solution as part of Novell's ZENworks systems management product line. Adding this functionality will allow Novell users to take advantage of policy-based NAC.

Michael Kaiser has been appointed executive director of the National Cyber Security Alliance. He will lead all programs for the NCSA, a joint effort among government, corporate, nonprofit and education partners whose goal is to educate about online protection. Kaiser formerly served as director of program development and strategic alliance at the National Center for Victims of Crime and has worked in the area of victim assistance since 1983.

Sunil Sampat has joined WorkLight, maker of security products for Web 2.0 solutions, as VP of sales for North America. He joins after heading the sales team at Endeca, an information access software firm.

Howard Schmidt, former White House cybersecurity adviser, has been named the first president of the Information Security Forum, a nonprofit consisting of 300 of the world's businesses and organizations. The appointment of Schmidt highlights ISF's plans to play a pivotal role in addressing global IT security threats.

Panda Security has launched its business partner program and plans to transition to a purely channel sales model. The partner program, or P3, guarantees participants a 10-point margin revenue improvement, and partners can resell Panda's products in their preferred platform: software, appliance or managed services. www.pandasecurity.com/usa