Some of the most experienced CISOs in Michigan are securing cloud platforms, managed service providers, communications infrastructure, and software companies whose clients and operations extend well beyond the Mitten. The leaders in this feature are based in Michigan or built the core of their careers here, and their work reflects a form of security leadership that operates at scale, across state lines, and in some cases across national borders.
Peter Avery — Chief Information Security Officer, Circle MSP
Peter Avery stepped into the CISO role at Circle MSP in January 2026, bringing nearly fifteen years of managed IT services experience from Visual Edge IT, where he progressed from Michigan regional manager through national sales fulfillment, national director of field services, director of cybersecurity, and VP of security and compliance. That operational arc, from field delivery through national management to security executive, gives him a ground-level understanding of how managed service environments actually work that most security leaders who arrive from enterprise backgrounds simply do not have. His exposure to more than 10,000 businesses across his career, combined with experience as an expert witness in technology matters, gives him a perspective on organizational security risk that is broader than most CISO profiles suggest.
Trevor Bidle — Chief Information Security Officer, US Signal
Employee number 23 at US Signal, Trevor Bidle has spent more than twenty-three years at the company, watching it grow from a regional network operator into a multi-state cloud and managed security provider. He built US Signal’s information security program from scratch, constructed its Security Operations Center, and launched eight security product offerings for customers, all while protecting more than $100 million in annual revenue. Before moving into the CISO role in 2015, he served as VP of engineering and VP of technical strategy, leading the deployment of the first Cisco 100 Gig DWDM in a live US production network and co-authoring whitepapers with Cisco on Ethernet over DWDM architectures that other companies used as deployment references. That engineering depth is not decorative. It is the foundation from which he built a security program that is technically credible at every layer.
Larry Field — Chief Information Security Officer, Centroid Systems
Larry Field has spent nearly nineteen years at Centroid Systems, progressing from IT consultant through senior IT consultant, data center operations and IT security manager, and senior manager before stepping into the CISO role in July 2024. That kind of extended institutional tenure inside a technology services company produces a security leader who understands the operational environment with a depth that external hires rarely match. His background spans data center operations, IT security management, and enterprise technology consulting across a career built entirely within Michigan’s technology services ecosystem.
Kristopher Kortright — Chief Information Security Officer, GTSaaS
Kristopher Kortright holds a patent from his time at Time Warner Cable for automating the configuration of network management tools, a detail that signals the depth of his technical background before he moved into security leadership. His career spans network engineering and OSS architecture at Time Warner Cable, product development and security application work at Comcast, and international consulting on cyber defense, OSINT tool development, and intelligence reporting for government IT departments. Since February 2022, he has volunteered with the IT Army of Ukraine, leading Team OneFist to conduct defensive cyber operations against Russian offensive activity, funding the effort personally until resources ran out. He joined GTSaaS as CISO in May 2024. Few security leaders in Michigan carry that combination of deep network engineering credentials, enterprise technology experience, and active wartime cyber defense work.
Ian Savickas — Deputy Chief Information Security Officer, Poppulo
Ian Savickas has served as deputy CISO at Poppulo since September 2023, leading security operations across all global products and entities for an employee communications platform operating at enterprise scale. Before Poppulo, he spent nearly two years as head of information security operations at Zendesk, where he led threat management, security tooling optimization, and control design across a global customer service software platform. His approach centers on business-positive security, positioning risk management, sales enablement, data protection, and product security as functions that support growth rather than constrain it. That orientation reflects years of operating inside software companies where security has to earn its seat at the product table.
Robert Former — Chief Information Security Officer and Vice President of Security, Acquia
Robert Former’s security career was built in Michigan. He managed the SOC at IBM Internet Security Systems, led security and network teams at Dawn Food Products in Jackson, consulted across the Grand Rapids area, and spent years at Itron, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Micro Focus in the Greater Lansing area before his work took him beyond state lines. At HPE and Micro Focus, he led compliance audit, account security, and business continuity functions for hosted software products including FedRAMP and PCI-certified environments. He joined Acquia as CISO and VP of security in March 2020, overseeing enterprise risk and cloud compliance for a digital experience platform serving some of the world’s largest organizations. The Michigan foundation shaped the practitioner. The roles that followed applied it at global scale.
Michigan Produces Security Talent That Travels
What this group reflects is something worth stating directly. Michigan does not just produce security talent. Its leaders have developed expertise that travels into national managed service operations, global cloud platforms, wartime cyber defense, and enterprise software security programs that operate across dozens of countries. The state’s technology sector is broader and deeper than its automotive identity suggests, and the security leaders it has developed are evidence of that.
Discover more Michigan CISOs:
- Securing the Machine: Michigan’s Automotive CISOs
- Protecting Michigan’s Patients: The State’s Healthcare CISOs
- Michigan’s Food and Beverage CISOs: Securing the Supply Chain from Field to Fork
- The CISOs Protecting Michigan’s Campuses, Classrooms, and Research
- Trust, Risk, and the CISOs Protecting Michigan’s Financial Institutions
