Missouri’s technology sector spans healthcare software, election technology, industrial SaaS platforms, managed IT services, and global enterprise software, and the security leaders protecting those organizations reflect that range. The IT CISOs in this feature are based in Missouri or built the core of their careers there, and their work extends from Kansas City and St. Louis to clients and operations well beyond state lines. What connects them is a security philosophy grounded in making protection a business enabler rather than an operational constraint.
Derek Rieger — Chief Information Security Officer, KNOWiNK
Derek Rieger leads cybersecurity at KNOWiNK, an election technology company where the security stakes extend beyond data protection into the integrity of democratic processes. His background spans public and private sector security, with experience in election security projects and high-stakes compliance environments where getting it wrong is not an option. He has served on boards and committees focused on proactive security measures and industry collaboration, and his approach centers on shifting security culture from a burden into a strategic enabler. In election technology, that framing is not just philosophical. It is operationally necessary in an environment where public scrutiny is constant and threat actors are motivated.
Saeed Valian — Chief Information Security Officer, symplr
Before stepping into his current CISO role at symplr, Saeed Valian built a track record across healthcare, technology, manufacturing, and consulting environments spanning more than 20 countries. At Saint Luke’s Health System, he served as deputy CISO and system director of information security for a 13,000-employee health system with 18 hospitals, where he introduced savings and efficiency of up to 60 percent on existing contracts within his first six months by renegotiating vendor agreements and consolidating technology. At Transaction Data Systems, he reduced vulnerabilities by more than 50 percent across the organization within six months, identified approximately one million dollars in cost savings over a three-year timeline, and built out incident response, identity management, and SOC capabilities for the largest network of independent pharmacy management solutions in the country. At WireCo WorldGroup, he led global network and security operations across more than 40 locations in 7 countries, achieving a 98 percent-plus external audit success rate across SOX, GDPR, ITAR, and ISO compliance programs. He now serves the broader IT industry through his CISO role at symplr, a healthcare operations platform operating well beyond Missouri’s borders.
Chad Hudson — Chief Information Security Officer, Datacor
Chad Hudson has served as CISO at Datacor since May 2022, leading security for a Kansas City-based chemical process manufacturing and distribution software company. His background spans seven years as CISO and data privacy officer at RevolutionEHR, where he built the security and compliance program from the ground up across HIPAA, GDPR, CCPA, and PCI-DSS requirements while simultaneously providing IT services for a distributed team of 300 and 20 eye care practices. Before RevolutionEHR, he spent eight years in security and IT system administration at KC Eye Specialists, giving him a grounded understanding of how healthcare technology security looks from inside a clinical environment. His approach to security is anchored in people as much as systems, which is consistent with someone who also serves as a pastor, mentor, and board member outside of his professional role. He has guided organizations through mergers, acquisitions, and digital transformation, and his philosophy of continuous personal reinvention shapes how he builds teams.
Joshua Brown — Chief Information Security Officer, Spektrum Labs
Joshua Brown rebuilt H&R Block’s global information security program as VP and CISO from April 2021 through December 2024, transitioning the organization from an 80 percent outsourced security model to a fully insourced operation, implementing zero trust and secure service edge architecture, achieving the company’s first SOC 2 attestation for a key business process, and driving down the impact of identity-theft-based tax fraud on customers and the business. He also launched Blockonic, a local security conference in Kansas City, and organized Capture the Flag tournaments to engage the broader cybersecurity community. Before H&R Block, he spent nearly six years at Omnicom Group and its subsidiary Consolidated Data Services as global head of security and director of security operations across a multinational advertising and communications enterprise. He now serves as CISO at Spektrum Labs and founded Digital Defense Consulting, a Kansas City-based advisory practice. He has spoken at ISC2 Congress, InfoSec World, INFRAGARD, ISSA, and the Info360 Expo, and has lobbied on Capitol Hill for stronger identity theft protections.
Matt Hart — Chief Information Security Officer, PTC
Matt Hart describes his current mandate at PTC plainly: accountable for the safety and security of corporate runtime, private cloud, and SaaS products across one of the world’s leading CAD and PLM software companies. Since joining as CISO in April 2022, he has integrated three separate security teams into a single operating unit, reduced 99 technology contracts down to 32, expanded the internal SOC to 24/7 coverage, and driven the organization toward full zero trust across all business units. He reports to the board on all incidents, risk remediation, and security technology decisions. Before PTC, he held CIO and CTO roles at Arise Virtual Solutions and Propio Language Services, and served as VP of IT for North America and Europe at Alorica, where he learned hard lessons about securing 99,000 remote agents operating across the globe. That operational breadth, spanning BPO, language services, and enterprise software, informs how he approaches security at a company whose products are used by engineers and manufacturers worldwide.
Adam Sloggett — Chief Information Security Officer and Lead Solutions Engineer, Keystone Technologies
Adam Sloggett has spent more than thirteen years at Keystone Technologies in Eureka, Missouri, building his career from NOC manager and solutions architect through lead solutions engineer to CISO, a progression that reflects genuine technical depth rather than a compliance-first security background. Before Keystone, he served four years in the United States Air Force, worked as a system security analyst and engineer at Missouri S&T, and spent five years as a network engineer at Scorpio Consulting. He consults on HIPAA and PCI-DSS compliance for healthcare organizations ranging from small regional physician practices to large nationwide groups, and speaks publicly at healthcare security events in the St. Louis area. His security philosophy is grounded in the practitioner’s conviction that understanding how to build things is the prerequisite for understanding how to break them, and that compliance and security are not competing objectives but complementary ones.
Timothy Kruse — Chief Information Security Officer, Radius Global Solutions
Timothy Kruse has served as CISO at Radius Global Solutions since June 2013, overseeing a compliance and security program spanning PCI-DSS, HIPAA, Red Flag, FISMA, SSAE 18, SOC 1, SOC 2, ISO 27001, and Sarbanes-Oxley across a financial services and accounts receivable management environment. His responsibilities span vulnerability management, system monitoring, incident response, business continuity, disaster recovery, and security awareness across an organization where regulatory compliance is not optional and audit readiness is a continuous operational state. Before Radius, he spent fifteen years at Saint Anthony’s Health Center as information security officer and IT manager, building that institution’s security, HIPAA, PCI, and HITECH compliance infrastructure from the ground up.
Missouri’s IT Security Leaders Are Doing the Work Quietly
Missouri does not always make the shortlist when people think about technology hubs, but the leaders in this feature are securing platforms that process tax returns, manage pharmacy operations, run elections, power industrial manufacturing software, and protect healthcare data for organizations operating nationally and globally. That breadth of impact, delivered without fanfare from Kansas City, St. Louis, and the communities between, reflects what Missouri’s IT security community has quietly built.
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