Women’s History Month is a fitting moment to spotlight the cybersecurity leaders helping shape how major institutions, public entities, universities, and private organisations think about resilience, risk, and digital trust. In New York, that leadership spans city government, higher education, financial infrastructure, legal services, and advisory work, reflecting just how broad and influential the state’s cybersecurity landscape has become.
Daria Kirilenko — Senior Cybersecurity Advisor, New York City Office of Technology & Innovation
Daria Kirilenko works at the centre of one of the country’s most important public-sector cyber environments, helping strengthen risk management capabilities for New York City. In her current role, she has helped build new risk processes, supported the city’s involvement in AI-related security work, and contributed to major policy efforts, including inaugural AI guidance. Her background across Gartner and Amazon gives her a strong mix of research, enterprise risk, and operational perspective, which makes her especially well suited to helping protect critical public services in a city as complex as New York.
Medha Bhalodkar — CISO & Enterprise IT Risk Officer, Columbia University
Medha Bhalodkar leads cybersecurity, identity and access management, and enterprise IT risk across one of the most complex higher education environments in the country. As Columbia University’s first CISO, she has had responsibility for security governance across 17 schools, 10 global centers, and more than one million identities. Her earlier career in financial services gave her deep experience in audit, risk, and information security, and her long list of industry recognitions reflects both technical credibility and leadership influence. She stands out as a major figure in New York cyber leadership because of the scale, institutional complexity, and governance demands of her role.
Laura Deaner — CISO, DTCC
Laura Deaner brings more than two decades of financial-sector cybersecurity experience to DTCC, where cyber resilience has outsized importance because of the organisation’s role in market infrastructure. She has held senior security leadership roles at CME Group, Northwestern Mutual, S&P Global, and PR Newswire, and has built a reputation as a CISO who can align regulatory demands, business priorities, and enterprise resilience. Her experience leading global security programs and managing security strategy across cloud, data protection, and incident response makes her one of the most significant cybersecurity executives in New York’s financial ecosystem.
Anna Mercado Clark — Partner, CISO, and Governing Committee Member, Phillips Lytle LLP
Anna Mercado Clark sits at the intersection of cybersecurity, privacy, digital forensics, and complex legal risk. As the first CISO at Phillips Lytle and a leader of the firm’s data security and privacy practice, she brings an unusually broad mix of legal, technical, and governance expertise to the role. Her work spans high-stakes e-discovery, digital forensics, cyber risk mitigation, and privacy program design, and her credentials in both law and privacy management make her especially notable in a market like New York, where cybersecurity increasingly overlaps with regulatory, litigation, and data-governance concerns.
Shira Rubinoff — CEO, The Cybersphere Group
Shira Rubinoff has built a visible and influential career across cybersecurity, AI advisory, thought leadership, and entrepreneurship. Through The Cybersphere Group, she advises organisations on cybersecurity and artificial intelligence strategy while also remaining one of the field’s most recognisable public voices. Her background as a builder of cybersecurity product companies, combined with her work in media, advisory boards, and women-in-technology initiatives, gives her a different kind of influence from a traditional in-house CISO. In New York, she stands out as a leader helping shape broader conversations around cyber risk, AI, and executive awareness.
Moriah Hara — CISO & AI Security, Risk & Governance Consultant, Vigilance Cyber Security
Moriah Hara has built one of the strongest security leadership track records on this list, with CISO roles at major financial and enterprise organisations and a growing profile in AI governance and cyber risk. Her experience spans banking, payments, cloud security, regulatory alignment, and board-level communication, and she has become an increasingly prominent voice on how organisations can adopt AI responsibly without losing sight of security and compliance. Based in New York and advising both large enterprises and emerging firms, she brings a mix of operational depth and forward-looking governance expertise that feels especially relevant right now.
The Women Shaping New York’s Cyber Future
New York’s cybersecurity leadership bench is shaped by women working across public service, higher education, financial infrastructure, law, consulting, and executive advisory. Together, they show how modern cyber leadership is no longer confined to one kind of institution or one kind of role.
Discover more women making their mark in cybersecurity through our Women’s Month tag.