New US CISO appointments, December 2021

Keep up with news of CSO, CISO, and other senior security executive appointments.

The upper ranks of corporate security are seeing a high rate of change as companies try to adapt to the evolving threat landscape. Many companies are hiring a chief security officer (CSO) or chief information security officer (CISO) for the first time to support a deeper commitment to information security.

Follow this column to keep up with new appointments to senior-level security roles and perhaps gain a little insight into hiring trends. If you have an announcement of your own that you would like us to include here, contact Amy Bennett, executive editor.

New CISO appointents, December 2021

Aaron Bishop steps into CISO role at the Air Force
Bishop joined the Air Force in November to lead security innovation. Prior to that he served as CISO at SAIC before founding security research organization the Quantum Security Alliance. (H/t FedScoop)

Shane Callahan joins Vanderbilt as university's first CISO
Callahan most recently services as VP & CISO at NaviHealth. Prior to that he held security roles at Tractor Supply Company, Deloitte, and Nissan, among others. (H/t Nashville Post)

Druva

Yogesh Badwe, CSO, Druva

Yogesh Badwe joins Druva as CSO
Prior to joining Druva, Badwe spent the last seven years in a number of security leadership positions at Okta, most recently serving as senior director of information security. Prior to Okta, Badwe led various information and product security programs at Salesforce, Orange Business Services, and Global Telesystems Ltd. (H/t Druva)

Salient Systems

Keith Aubele, CSO, Salient Systems

Prior to joining the video platform provider, Aubele held security leadership roles at The Home Depot and Walmart. (H/t Salient Systems)

Ben Carr joins Cradelpoint as CISO
Prior to joining the telecom company, Carr held security leadership roles at Qualys, Visa, and Nokia. He currently serves as VP and board member of IT-ISAC. (H/t GlobeNewswire)

Chris Evans joins HackerOne as CISO and Chief Hacking Officer
Prior to joining the bug bounty platform, Evans held security leadership positions at Dropbox and Tesla. He is the creator of Google's Project Zero. (H/t Business Wire)

Avishai Avivi joins SafeBreach as CISO
Prior to joining the security company, Mr. Avivi held security leadership roles at Tax Credit Co., Draft Security, ETrade, and Wells Fargo. (H/t Security)

Den Jones joins Banyan Security as company's first CSO
Prior to joining the security vendor, Jones most recently served as senior director of enterprise security at Cisco and director of enterprise security at Adobe. (H/t Yahoo!)

Bill Long named CISO at Xenith Solutions
In this role he oversees cybersecurity operations and strategy for Xenith and TRI-COR Industries (TCI), a wholly owned subsidiary of Xenith. Mr. Long has held the position of senior cybersecurity engineer for Xenith since it was founded. He has over 40 years of industry experience in large enterprise network environments specializing in cybersecurity architecture, design, engineering, and operations. (H/t Cision)

New CISO appointents, November 2021

Josh Bressers joins Anchore as VP of security
Prior to joining the container security provider, Bressers led product security teams at Elastic and Red Hat. He also has an active track record in the open-source community and was one of the creators of the open source security mailing list for sharing of vulnerabilities. (H/t Anchore)

Chris Gebhardt joins Synoptek as CISO
Prior to joining the managed services provider, Gebhardt held security leadership positions at StratoZen and WeWork and IT leadership positions at Jet.com and Air Medical Resource Group, according to his LinkedIn profile. (H/t Security Magazine)

Pinny Tam joins FastTrack as CISO
Prior to joining the insurtech provider, Tam held security leadership positions at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Bank of China, and Morgan Stanley. (H/t Cision)

Michael Gregg appointed North Dakota CISO
Prior to being named CISO, Gregg had acted as interim CISO for the state. He has held security leadership positions at International Container Terminal Services, Villanova University, and Superior Solutions, according to his LinkedIn profile. (H/t Security Magazine)

New CISO appointents, October 2021

Michigan CSO Laura Clark appointed to CIO role
In her new role, Clark will still perform her CSO duties. Clark has worked in the state's Department of Technology, Management and Budget since 2006 in various roles. She became CSO in January, 2021. (H/t Govtech)

Frank Russo joins Calendly as company’s first CISO

Calendly

Frank Russo, CISO, Calendly

Prior to joining the scheduling platform provider, Russo was VP of information security and CISO of XRP II at Ripple. Before that, he spent nearly a decade at Salesforce as the director of enterprise security. 

Bill Shields joins TransUnion as CISO
Prior to joining TransUnion, Shields most recently served as SVP of cybersecurity at VISA. He has also held senior security leadership roles at Citadel and Fidelity Investments.

David Zambri appointed associate vice president and CISO of the University of Central Florida
Zambria most recently served as UCF's Deputy Chief of Police. He has 28 years of experience in law enforcement and 14 years in senior leadership roles.

Joe Silva joins JLL as CISO

JLL

Joe Silva, CISO, JLL

Prior to JLL, Silva worked at credit reporting agency and data analytics company TransUnion, where he built and led a large, global organization responsible for cybersecurity, insider risk and product security. Before that, he worked on the commercial product side of cybersecurity with Symantec and iSight Partners, which was acquired by FireEye in 2016.

New CISO appointents, September 2021

Leo Howell joins Georgia Tech as CISO
Howell most recently served as CISO and interim chief technology officer at the University of Oregon. Before that, he held information security and audit roles at North Carolina State University. (H/t EdScoop)

Jim Nelms joins North American Dental Group as its first CISO
Nelms serves on the Board of Directors for BluePoint Security and most recently worked as CISO for healthcare diagnostics company LabCorp. He also served as CISO for the Mayo Clinic and The World Bank. (H/t Cision)

Selim Aissi joins Applied Dynamics Board of Directors
Aissi is a board member of the National Technology Security Coalition, Chairman of the mortgage risk committee for the FS-ISAC, and serves on several advisory boards. He was SVP & CISO at Ellie Mae, VP of Global Information Security at Visa, and held security leadership roles at Intel, Applied Dynamics, General Motors, and General Dynamics. (H/t StreetInsider.com)

Richard Foltak adds CISO duties to his role at Dito
Foltak's new title is SVP, head of cloud & CISO. Prior to joining the cloud service provider, Foltak was Chief Architect at Deloitte, where he helped build their Cloud Delivery Center and Managed Services practice. He also worked in technology and security leadership rolls at Verizon and Cisco. (H/t Cision)

Kevin Brown returns to SAIC as CISO
Earlier in his career, Brown was SVP and operations manager for cybersecurity at SAIC, a role he left in 2011 to join Raytheon as Vice President of its information security business. Brown most recently served as VP and CISO at medical device maker Boston Scientific. (H/t Washington Technology) 

Kevin Ford joins Esri as CISO
Prior to joining the mapping technology company, Ford served as North Dakota's CISO since 2019. (H/t StateScoop) 

Chris Olsen joins Sphere board of directors
Olsen currently serves as ADP's VP of global cybersecurity services and CISO. Earlier in his career, he held product management and security leadership roles at Stealthbits Technologies and Merck. (H/t Cision)

Jason Kees joins Ping Identity as CISO
Prior to joining Ping, Kees most recently served as CISO of VP of information security at Groupon. Prior to that he held security leadership roles at CBS Interactive and Oracle. (H/t Businesswire)

Shane Dwyer is the new statewide CISO for the State of Iowa
Prior to his new role with the State of Iowa, Dwyer served for six years as CISO for the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. He also served as Senior Director for Information Security and Privacy Officer at Minnesota State University, Mankato and as Operations Manager with the US Air Force. (H/t StateScoop) 

Devin Ertel joins Menlo Security as CISO
Most recently, Ertel served as CISO at finch company Blackhawk Network. Prior to that he was head of security and IT at Guidebook. He has also worked as a security consultant at Mandiant and as penetration testing manager at the Federal Reserve. Ertel is a venture advisor at YL Ventures. (H/t Yahoo!)

Gregory Edwards named FEMA's first CISO
Edwards joined the Federal Emergency Management Agency in 2020 as senior technical advisor to the Office of the CIO. Prior to joining FEMA, he served as director of infrastructure services at the NATO Communications and Information Agency in Belgium. He also held leadership roles at the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). (H/t Meritalk)

Jesse Kinser joins Pathwire as CISO
Prior to joining the email marketing solutions provider, Kinser was CISO at LifeOmic, a healthcare-focused software company. She is active in the bug bounty community and was featured as one of the World’s Top 100 Hackers on the NBC Nightly News. In her new role Kinser will report to Pathwire CEO Will Conway. (H/t Businesswire)

Andy Ellis joins Orca Security as Advisory CISO
Ellis is an operating partner atYL Ventures, founder and CEO of professional development company, Duha, former CSO of Akamai, and was inducted into CSO's Hall of Fame in 2021. (H/t Orca Security)

New CISO appointents, August 2021

Pamela Fusco joins Splunk as CISO
Prior to joining Splunk, Fusco held CISO and CSO roles at Apollo Education Group, Digex, and Merck and served as executive vice president, head of global information security at Citibank. She currently serves on the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA) board of directors as CFO and is a founder of the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) and SAFE-BioPharma. A former U.S. Navy cryptologist, Fusco began her career focused on supporting security proceedings for government and national intelligence special operations, including advising the U.S. White House. (H/t Splunk)

William Hanning joins Groups360 as CISO
Prior to joining Groups360, Hanning most recently served as AVP of information security at Ardent Health Services. (H/t Hospitality Net)

Angelica Phaneuf joins Army Software Factory as CISO
Before joining the Army Software Factory, Phaneuf served as chief of cyber security engineering for the Air Force. (H/t MeriTalk) 

Fermin Serna joins Databricks as CSO
Prior to joining Databricks, Serna most recently served as SVP & CISO at Citrix. Before that, he spent seven years at Google, where he led the Product Security team and four years at Microsoft as senior security software engineer. Serna is a board advisor for DeNexis, Inc.  (H/t Information Age)

John Avery joins Direct Technology as CISO
Avery has held security roles in the managed services, financial services, and health technology sectors. (H/t Techwire)

Chris White joins Tego Cyber as CISO
Prior to joining the threat intelligence platform provider, White served as deputy CISO at Interpublic Group and before that worked at EY, where he built the professional services firm's managed security service. (H/t MSSP alert)

Rinki Sethi joins ForgeRock board of directors
Ms. Sethi is currently VP & CISO at Twitter. She also serves as a board member at OneProsper International and Women in CyberSecurity. Prior to joining Twitter, Sethi held security leadership roles at IBM, Palo Alto Networks, Intuit, and eBay. (H/t The Joplin Globe)

Larry Grossman assumes CISO role at the Federal Aviation Administration
Before stepping into the CISO role, Grossman served as the agency's deputy director, information security & privacy since June 2014 and acting CISO since April 2019. (H/t MeriTalk)

Meron Behar joins Transmit Security as CISO, VP
Prior to joining the identity authentication provider, Behar most recently served as deputy CISO at fintech payment processor Nuvei. Before that he held security leadership roles at SafeCharge, ForeScout Technologies, Psagot Investment House, and Phoenix Insurance. (H/t BusinessWire)

Shane Swanson joins WaTech’s state Office of Cybersecurity as deputy CISO for policy & program management
Prior to joining WaTech, Swanson served as deputy CISO for the Texas Department of Information Resources and as a strategic advisor on cybersecurity for the North Dakota Information Technology Department. (H/t WaTech)

Jason Shockey joins Cenlar FSB as SVP & CISO
Before to joining the mortgage loan subservicer, Shockey held CISO roles at CyberPoint International and ProSight Specialty Insurance. Prior to that, he served in cyberspace ops and IT leadership for the US Marine Corps. (H/t DSnews)

Andre Mintz joins Absolute Software board of directors
Mr. Mintz, a former law enforcement officer and US Air Force veteran, currently serves as CISO of financial services firm Newport Group. Earlier in his career he held security leadership roles at Red Ventures, Reuters, and Kinko's. (H/t Valdosta Daily Times)