Top 10 women in cybersecurity keeping your companies safe at night

Published on
13/12/2019 07:38 AM

Chandra B. McMahon - Verizon

Chandra is the Senior Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) for Verizon, having joined in 2015 to help change the way Verizon understands and tackles issues of cybersecurity.

Prior to joining Verizon, McMahon showed her versatility in leadership positions at Lockheed Martin, developing and delivering safe approaches to cybersecurity and information technology solutions for a vast range of Fortune 500 companies in critical infrastructure industries.

Chandra's expertise is now demanded to engage with White House and Congressional staff, US government leaders and industry forums, as a reputable and celebrated cybersecurity guardian whose skills are desired and demanded all over.

Myrna Soto - Spirit Airlines / ForgePoint Capital

As the former corporate senior vice president and global CISO of Comcast, Myrna was in charge of securing the assets and data of one of the biggest streaming companies in the entire world.

Her job consisted in overlooking network/infrastructure security, data security strategies and operational efficiency among other things. Something she was able to carry over to Spirit Airlines as a corporate director.

Jenna McAuley - American Express

Vice president, information security and information technology oversight and CISO at American Express, is there anything Jenna McAuley can't do? Before her work at the famous bank, Jenna was known for implementing security teams for large, outsourced federal projects, constantly innovating and re-shaping old strategies for cybersecurity.

Cybersecurity for banks is especially challenging, as the digitalisation of currency pushes more and more for strengthening online accounts, something that has been infinitely more challenging than securing physical money. Part of Jenna's talent is in assuring one of the most vulnerable places in the world stays intact through application development and code analysis via compliance monitoring, incident management and remediation.

Jill Knesek - Cheetah Digital

Jill is the CSO for Cheetah Digital, responsible for spearheading development, planning, coordinating, administering, managing, staffing and supervising all aspects of information security.

With 20+ years in cybersecurity and having served as a Special Agent for the FBI, Jill's approach to cybersecurity comes with an acute awareness of the criminal mind and criminal approaches to data breaches and hacks.

Other impressive names under her belt include BT, Mattel and Exodus, a few other reasons as to why Jill is trusted to maintain order and peace in the cyber realms she is responsible for.

Jana Monroe - Herbalife

An "advancing women executives leader", Jana is a strategic and pragmatic vice president of global security at Herbalife, responsible for both physical and cybersecurity. She originally joined Herbalife following her departure from the multi-billion dollar company, Southern California Edison Company (SCE), where she was Chief Security Officer and overlooked their infrastructure.

Before entering the corporate arena Jana had a distinguished two decade streak in the FBI, including five years as a "criminal profiler" at Quantico. Something that definitely helped solidify her understanding of anticipating threats from the real and cyber world.

Theresa Payton - Dark Cubed / Fortalice Solutions

Theresa Payton is the co-founder of Dark Cubed, a fantastic new company that provides enterprises cost-effective approaches to managing their cyber security plans. Keeping new startups and bigger businesses safe from fraud, hacking, breaches and much more.

As the president and CEO of Fortalice solutions, Theresa manages a company focuses on risk, fraud and security, assuring the safety of businesses and government organisations by assuring their information remains private and intact from oncoming threats.

Rebecca Wynn - Matrix Medical Network

As the head of information security and data protection officer (DPO), as well as a senior director, Rebecca leads Matrix Medical Network's overall security strategy, security architecture development and security programs, constantly complying with industry standards including requirements such as SOX, HIPAA, HITECH, and HITRUST CSF.

Her work with data revolves around perpetual crafting, implementing and testing the improvement of a comprehensive security program.

Mona Bates - Raytheon

Possibly one of the most daunting companies to help with cybersecurity, Mona is the vice president of information technology and the chief information officer of Raytheon. She is also involved as Raytheon Intelligence and Information Systems' director for planning, architecture and technology, which involves organisational responsibilities such as IT strategic planning and service portfolio management.

In her previous roles she worked as the senior director for IT program execution in Raytheon, and the organisation manager for tenant engineering and operations and IT services governance systems engineer for Boecore. You could say that missile defence agencies are her specialty.

Laura Payne - BMO Financial Group

Laura is a senior information security professional in charge of being the director for information security services at BMO Financial Group. She leads the team responsible for the platforms supporting enterprise-wide security for BMO all over the world.

Having moved up several steps through BMO, Laura has quickly proved to be as hardworking as she is skilled, assuring her 10 years of experience never goes to waste in the financial services industry.

Mivy James - BAE Systems Applied Intelligence

An IT professional with over 20 years of experience under belt, Mivy worked for several international IT consultancies and corporations prior to being hired by BAE Systems Applied Intelligence.

What most consider to be way too overwhelming is a day in the life of Mivy James. BAE is focused on keeping countries all over the world safe from cyber crime, and as head of consulting and national security, her work involves spearheading almost every project with her wisdom and strategic knowledge.