Property and real estate touch some of the most personal decisions people make, where to live, how to rent, where to park, where to work. The businesses behind those decisions hold tenant records, property data, payment details, and increasingly the infrastructure that connects physical spaces to digital services. The leaders in this feature are securing organisations spanning proptech, parking management, workspace booking, property data platforms, and social housing, and their work reflects what it means to protect the systems behind where people live, work, and move.
Chris Watson – CISO, Dwellr
Chris Watson has served as CISO at Dwellr, a property technology company, since January 2026, in a part-time capacity based in Edinburgh. Before Dwellr, he spent nearly three years at Datavant, the healthcare data connectivity company, progressing through head of end user engineering, head of IT and enterprise security, and head of secure workforce roles. Before Datavant, he spent more than five years at Mirador Analytics, a drug development analytics company, initially as chief development officer and IT before formally taking on head of IT and security, and later head of IT and strategy director following the company’s acquisition by Datavant in October 2021.
His earlier career spans more than seventeen years at Kyowa Kirin International in commercial excellence roles across the pharmaceutical industry, giving him deep grounding in regulated data environments before his transition into full-time security leadership. That path from pharmaceutical commercial strategy into IT and security leadership at a data connectivity company, and now into proptech, reflects a career built on scaling secure operations across very different regulated sectors.
David Zilberberg – Group CISO, APCOA Group Ltd.
David Zilberberg has served as group CISO at APCOA Group, one of Europe’s largest parking management companies, since January 2026. Before APCOA, he spent two and a half years as head of cyber security at London Metropolitan University, and has run DefFus, his own defensive security consultancy, since June 2019. He spent nearly two years as regional information security officer for Europe at Standard Chartered Bank, and earlier held security architect and sales engineering roles at ITC Secure Networking, Imperva, AlienVault, and Symantec.
He has been deeply embedded in the UK security community for more than a decade, having been involved with BSides London since 2014 and serving in successive leadership roles at the Information Systems Security Association’s UK chapter, including secretary and COO for five years. That combination of banking sector security governance, higher education security leadership, and long standing community involvement gives him a broad foundation now applied to securing a parking infrastructure company operating across multiple European countries.
Dan Steel – CISO, Desana and Managing Consultant, Steel FYI
Dan Steel currently holds two concurrent security roles. Since June 2026, he has served as fractional CISO at Desana, a hybrid workspace and office booking platform, where he owns and drives the company’s full compliance programme covering ISO 27001, ISO 27701, and Cyber Essentials, including relationships with audit and security partners. Desana’s business, connecting companies to flexible workspace and meeting room bookings across a global property network, places it squarely in the property and real estate technology space this feature focuses on.
Alongside Desana, he has run Steel FYI since September 2022, a consultancy providing fractional CISO support and cyber risk guidance to startups and small businesses, with a particular focus on ISO 27001 certification. His broader portfolio of recent and prior engagements includes fractional CISO work for Granular Energy, a green energy platform, and head of information security roles, both interim and permanent, at Risk Ledger, a supply chain security platform. Earlier in his career, he built deep operational security experience across retail and ecommerce, including leading detect and respond functions for THG’s internal SOC across a portfolio of consumer brands, and security engineering at Purple and Missguided. That breadth across ecommerce, energy, and supply chain security, now applied through Desana to the property and workspace sector, reflects a consultant whose fractional model lets him bring lessons from multiple industries into each engagement.
Harjit Sandhu – CISO, Houseful
Harjit Sandhu has served as CISO at Houseful since April 2025, leading security for the parent company of Zoopla, Hometrack, Prime Location, Mojo, Alto, and Calcasa, a family of brands that together make Houseful the leader in UK residential property software, data, and insight. He progressed to the role after a year as director of information security and eight months as head of cyber security at the same company, having joined via Zoopla, where he served as head of cyber security before the group rebrand.
Before moving into security leadership, he spent more than a decade as a software and application security engineer, including nearly two years as principal application security engineer at Zoopla and eight years at ASOS.com progressing from application support engineer through senior software engineer and ultimately lead application security engineer. That deep technical grounding in application security, built across two of the UK’s most recognisable digital consumer brands, now underpins how he protects the property data platforms that power decisions for millions of UK homebuyers and renters.
Kat Valentine – Head of Cyber Security, Architecture and Assurance, Your Housing Group
Kat Valentine has spent more than seven years at Your Housing Group, one of the UK’s largest social housing providers managing around 29,000 properties across the North West, Yorkshire, and North Midlands, progressing from solutions analyst through solutions and innovation architect to her current role as head of cyber security, architecture and assurance since October 2024. Her career is rooted in bridging technical complexity with corporate objectives across two highly regulated sectors, financial services and social housing.
Before Your Housing Group, she spent nearly ten years at Barclays and Together, a specialist lender, across UAT management roles spanning nearly twelve years combined. That grounding in financial services testing and quality assurance, carried into a housing sector role spanning architecture, cyber security, and assurance, reflects a career built on ensuring systems work correctly and securely before they reach the people who depend on them, whether that is a bank customer or a tenant in one of Your Housing Group’s 29,000 homes.
Property Security Protects More Than Data
The organisations in this feature hold the records, transactions, and infrastructure behind where people live, work, and park. A breach in this sector does not just expose data. It can disrupt access to housing, parking, workspace, or the property information that underpins some of the biggest financial decisions people make. The leaders in this feature, across companies both large and small, permanent and fractional, are building programmes that protect the systems behind the addresses people call home.
Discover more CISOs protecting the property and real estate sector:
- Closing the Deal Securely: The CISOs Protecting Real Estate Transactions
- Cybersecurity Leaders to Watch in Pennsylvania’s Real Estate Industry
- CISOs to Watch in France’s Real Estate Industry
- CISOs to Watch in Canadian Real Estate
John Kevin Hao is a news and feature writer covering cybersecurity, technology, and business targeted for professional audiences.