Australia and New Zealand’s food and beverage producers run farms, processing plants, breweries, and wineries that feed and supply markets around the world, and their operational technology and global supply chains make them attractive targets for attackers. The five cybersecurity leaders below protect a dairy cooperative, a meat processor, a bakery and food group, a brewer, and a wine company. Their routes into security are anything but uniform. One managed a café in the early 1990s before spending two decades in IT and security at the same food group. Another designed the networks for the Australian Future Submarine Program. A third served as CISO at a steelmaker and two energy retailers, and a fourth spent a decade leading test and documentation teams at National Instruments in Texas.
Catherine Buhler – Global CISO, Fonterra
Catherine Buhler began at Telstra managing PCI DSS and ISO 27001 compliance, then served as national security manager and general manager of cyber security governance within its security operations, overseeing global customer security, vulnerability management, and secure code review. She went on to serve as CISO of BlueScope, Alinta Energy, and EnergyAustralia, where she spent nearly five years leading security for the energy retailer. After a year as executive director of Impleo, advising clients and taking interim executive leadership roles, Buhler became Global CISO of Fonterra in October 2025. Her experience spans ASX 100 companies across energy, manufacturing, financial services, telecommunications, retail, and government.
Stephen Harris – Head of Customer Solutions and Cyber Security, George Weston Foods
Stephen Harris managed a café with more than 20 staff in the early 1990s before starting in IT as a systems administrator at APN Holdings in Auckland, where he led the enterprise systems team behind The New Zealand Herald’s round-the-clock operations and its VMware server consolidation. He joined George Weston Foods in 2007 as a security engineer and has spent nearly 20 years there, leading systems engineering and client platform teams, serving as IT security manager, and building the company’s security policy framework with its UK parent, Associated British Foods. As lead architect, he oversaw a collaboration transformation spanning 3,200 devices across 65 sites and a data centre migration. As security architect he established an operational security capability, and as architecture manager he supported four greenfield factory builds and developed an industrial control systems network pattern. Harris has led customer solutions and cyber security since March 2022, with a team of more than 80.
Damien Smith – General Manager, Cyber Security and Risk, Asahi Beverages
Damien Smith began as a business consultant at Arthur Andersen and spent more than seven years as a senior principal consultant at Siebel Systems across Europe and Australia, followed by a product management role at a telecommunications start-up. Over nine years at ANZ, he led delivery of a global loan management system across three countries, then headed infrastructure delivery, introducing machine learning-based cyber analytics, network access control, and internal segmentation while rolling out agile practices to 1,000 technology operations staff. As cyber defence transition lead, he restructured the bank’s cyber defence team and built a threat model using MITRE ATT&CK. At NAB he built an insider threat capability with machine learning detection for insider fraud. Smith joined Asahi Beverages as head of cyber security in 2020 and became general manager of cyber security and risk in August 2024. He also sits on the board of community services organisation commUnity+.
Jason Hargenrader – General Manager of IT Services, Infrastructure & Cyber, Treasury Wine Estates
Jason Hargenrader spent more than a decade at National Instruments in Austin, Texas, growing from quality assurance, test, and documentation roles to senior group manager. After moving to Melbourne, he led IT operations at Operations Feedback Systems, cutting customer onboarding from more than a month to under a week. At MECCA he rose from service delivery and IT operations manager to head of infrastructure and operations for more than 6,000 users, building a cyber resilience programme backed by a 24/7 SOC, cutting AWS spend by 11% in a single quarter, and introducing generative AI tools across the business. Hargenrader became general manager of IT services, infrastructure, and cyber at Treasury Wine Estates in July 2025, leading cyber resilience and the company’s global technology environment and reporting on technology risk to executives and the board.
Gildas Bebin – Head of Cyber Security and Infrastructure, Thomas Foods International
Gildas Bebin started in IT network and support at French food company Bonduelle, then spent nearly nine years at Sogeti as a systems engineer, virtual infrastructure consultant, and IT operations manager. At Naval Group in France, he managed operations for product lifecycle management systems and led infrastructure design for the Australian Future Submarine Program. He moved to Adelaide in 2017 to establish Naval Group Australia’s ICT capabilities as ICT manager and CISO, then served as its ICT design authority, aligning architecture with the Australian ISM and French regulations. After a year as a director at Deloitte and founding his own consultancy, Bebin became head of cyber security and infrastructure at Thomas Foods International in May 2024.
Feeding the World Securely
These five leaders bring very different strengths to protecting food and beverage producers. Buhler and Bebin carried security leadership from energy, steel, and defence into the sector, while Harris has grown with George Weston Foods for nearly two decades. Smith brought banking cyber defence experience to Asahi, and Hargenrader applied retail infrastructure and cloud expertise to a global wine business. Together they help keep the farms, factories, and brands of Australia and New Zealand running securely.
Discover more CISOs securing their organizations:
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- Securing the Integrators: The EU’s IT Services Cybersecurity Leaders to Watch
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John Kevin Hao is a news and feature writer covering cybersecurity, technology, and business targeted for professional audiences.