Melih Abdulhayoğlu


Melih Abdulhayoğlu is a Turkish American entrepreneur and CEO of Comodo Group, an Internet security company he founded in the United Kingdom in 1998 and relocated to the US in 2004. In November 2017, he sold 50% of the Company's share to Francisco Partners, a private equity firm based on San Francisco. The firm is now branded as Sectigo.

Early life

Melih Abdulhayoğlu was born in Turkey, where he studied at Hatay high-school. At the age of 18, he moved to the United Kingdom, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Electronic Engineering from the University of Bradford in 1991.

Career

Abdulhayoğlu is the founder of Comodo, an internet security company, and established the industry standards organization CA/Browser Forum in 2005, initially to promote new standards that resulted in the creation of Extended Validation SSL Certificates.
In 2009, Abdulhayoğlu organized the Common Computing Security Standards Forum, initially to deal with the problem of faux antivirus software being used by cyber-criminals.
Abdulhayoğlu features in Forbes Turkey's 12th "100 Richest Turks" list, announced in March, 2017. Forbes announced that he is estimated net worth of US$1.6 billion as of April 2018.

Controversy

In 2016, a lawsuit was filed in the New York Supreme Court by the estate of former business partner Eric Emanual who alleged that Abdulhayoglu denied shares of Comodo to Emanuel's family. In 2019, a related case was dismissed by a judge in the British Virgin Islands where Abdulhayoglu accused Emanuel of fraud.