Nebraska’s financial services and insurance sector depends on cybersecurity leaders who can protect sensitive financial systems while supporting compliance, resilience, customer trust, and day-to-day operational continuity. The people in this feature reflect that responsibility across banking, insurance, and financial institutions where security work is closely tied to risk management, governance, fraud prevention, and long-term institutional stability. Their backgrounds span information security leadership, cybersecurity program building, compliance, and the practical work of strengthening defenses in highly regulated environments.
Eric Traut — Director, Information Security, FNBO
Eric Traut serves as director of information security at FNBO, where his recent progression through cybersecurity and security leadership roles points to deepening responsibility inside one of Nebraska’s best-known financial institutions. Before stepping into his current role, he served as SOC team lead at Nelnet and held cybersecurity engineering roles at Bank of the West, giving him experience across both bank and financial-services environments. That mix of operational security leadership, engineering experience, and current responsibility within FNBO makes him a strong fit for a Nebraska financial services and insurance cybersecurity feature.
Eliot Irons — Director of Cybersecurity, National Indemnity Company
Eliot Irons is director of cybersecurity at National Indemnity Company, where he has led the building and maturation of the company’s security program for nearly a decade. His profile emphasizes strategic cybersecurity leadership, program development, board and executive communication, and a broad range of delivered capabilities including vulnerability management, PCI-DSS compliance, security awareness, PAM, SIEM, EDR, managed SOC implementation, and ongoing zero-trust and cloud security work. His focus on aligning security to business and IT goals, combined with visible results in a major insurance environment, makes him one of the stronger cybersecurity leadership profiles in Nebraska’s insurance space.
Taylor Kendle — Chief Information Security Officer, First State Bank Nebraska
Taylor Kendle serves as chief information security officer at First State Bank Nebraska, where his long tenure reflects a career developed entirely within the bank across progressively more senior technology, risk, and security roles. Before becoming CISO, he held titles including executive risk officer, information security officer, information systems officer, and business analyst officer, giving him a layered understanding of both the institution and the regulatory and operational realities of banking. That combination of continuity, internal progression, and executive-level information security responsibility gives him a particularly grounded profile for this sector.
Allen Curtis — Director, Deputy Chief Information Security Officer, WoodmenLife
Allen Curtis is director and deputy chief information security officer at WoodmenLife, following a long stretch as director of information security at the same organization. His profile points to sustained leadership inside a Nebraska-based insurance and financial-services environment, where he has helped shape security direction over multiple years. While the public details provided are concise, his duration in senior information security leadership at WoodmenLife makes him a credible inclusion for a Nebraska financial services and insurance feature centered on experienced security leaders with established organizational influence.
Why cyber leadership matters in regulated financial environments
What stands out across this group is how closely cybersecurity in financial services and insurance is tied to trust, resilience, and regulatory discipline. These leaders are not only protecting systems and data. They are helping secure the institutions, transactions, and customer relationships that sit at the center of Nebraska’s banking and insurance landscape.
Explore more profiles of the leaders shaping cybersecurity across numerous industries in our CISOs to Watch collection.