The biggest stages in American cybersecurity, from RSAC and Black Hat to DEF CON, Gartner, and the BSides circuit, depend on practitioners willing to share what they have learned. Every one of the seven leaders below has held the CISO title, and each has become a familiar voice at the podium. Their paths into security are as varied as their talks. One trained as an artist before becoming a technologist. Another founded Houston’s first internet service provider in the 1990s. A third earned a Ph.D. in industrial and organizational psychology to understand why people take cyber risks, and a fourth took the DEF CON stage to show how police radar and laser systems could be hacked. Together they bring perspectives from private equity, Wall Street, local government, critical infrastructure, and the hacker community.
Adrian Peters – Managing Director & CISO, Vista Equity Partners
Adrian Peters led information security at Digitas and Qsent, where he briefed the board and served as technical lead on a national wireless 411 services proposal. He spent seven years as head of consulting at Neohapsis, building a 60-person practice serving more than 30 Fortune 100 organizations. As CISO of Bridgewater Associates, he grew a three-person team into a security organization of more than 120 protecting $150 billion in assets under management. At BNY Mellon he served as managing director and chief technology risk officer, leading a 140-person organization across 42 countries. Peters joined Vista Equity Partners in 2020 as managing director and CISO, leading cyber, data, and AI governance across a portfolio of more than 90 enterprise technology companies. He has delivered more than $400 million in cyber risk reduction, guided more than 30 compliance certifications including FedRAMP and HITRUST, built a centralized cyber operations center serving more than 100 companies, and leads Vista’s Agentic Factory initiative for secure AI agent deployment. He sits on the board of the Internet Security Alliance and has delivered keynotes at RSA Conference and Black Hat.
Matthew Rosenquist – CISO, Mercury Risk and Compliance
Matthew Rosenquist spent more than 23 years at Intel, leading information security for mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures, planning security strategy for Intel’s PC products, and serving as cybersecurity strategist for its AI group. After four years as CISO of Eclipz, he became CISO and cybersecurity strategist at Mercury Risk and Compliance in 2024, and in 2025 he founded Cybersecurity Insights, an advisory and podcast that publishes annual cybersecurity predictions. With a following of nearly 200,000 professionals, he was named a LinkedIn Top 10 Technology Voice in 2018 and a Thinkers360 Top 10 Cybersecurity Thought Leader in 2019. Rosenquist teaches on LinkedIn Learning, contributes to the AARM Foundation’s work on securing AI-driven actions, and sits on advisory boards including Brandeis University’s information security program and the HMG Strategy CISO Executive Leadership Summit. He is a featured speaker at the Official Cybersecurity Summit Los Angeles.
Allen Ohanian – Deputy CISO, County of San Mateo
Allen Ohanian spent 25 years in Los Angeles County government, starting as a clerk in Public Works and working as an application developer and database administrator before becoming the first information security and privacy officer for County Counsel. From 2016 to 2026 he served as CISO and assistant CIO of the Department of Children and Family Services, the nation’s largest child welfare agency. There he built the department’s first enterprise security and privacy program, led a 180-person IT organization and a $32 million portfolio protecting more than 15,000 users, ran a 24/7 SOC that handled more than 8,400 incidents, and cut security incidents by more than 20%. He was named LA County Information Security Officer of the Year four times and was a 2026 finalist for the inaugural SC Media and RSAC Resilient CISO Award. Ohanian became deputy CISO of the County of San Mateo in October 2026. He holds a Ph.D. in industrial and organizational psychology, founded E-Guard Cybersecurity Solutions, and teaches at National University and as a guest lecturer at UC Berkeley. He has spoken on more than 30 stages across the US, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Armenia, including a keynote panel on deepfakes at Enterprise Connect in Las Vegas and the opening keynote at the California Technology Summit in 2026.
Liz Morton – CISO, Stealth
Liz Morton studied art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before starting as a system administrator. After IT leadership and audit roles at Ingram Industries and mBlox, she spent nearly nine years at Intercontinental Exchange. As director of IT engineering she grew the team from 8 to 50, and as senior director of IT she moved thousands of employees and a live trading floor fully remote in three weeks. As head of cybersecurity, she led more than 200 professionals across 68 business units, scaled the budget from $4 million to $12 million, and secured the integration of the $11 billion Black Knight acquisition. She went on to serve as field CISO at Axonius and Cloudflare before becoming CISO of a stealth company in August 2026. Morton holds an MBA from Georgia Tech. She keynoted the Gartner Security Summit in 2026, has spoken at RSAC and Black Hat, and delivered a BSides Atlanta 2026 keynote reviewing the year in cyber and AI and what it means for careers.
Geoffrey Poer – CISO, DFND Security
Geoffrey Poer spent six years handling incidents and intrusion detection on the University of Arizona’s security incident response team, then worked as a senior security architect at Calence. At Intuit he managed global security operations and launched its first security operations center. As director of security at Gaikai, he built the first global security team for Sony’s PlayStation Now streaming service, developing stream encryption, automated fuzzing, and global DDoS mitigation that led to several patent filings. Poer has served as CISO and managing partner of DFND Security since 2016, advising Fortune 500 enterprises and critical infrastructure operators on cloud security, risk, and resilience. He has been a DEF CON Goon since 2013, holds CISSP and multiple GIAC certifications, and has spoken on panels at DISTRIBUTECH.
Bill Swearingen – Founding Partner, TRIFIDENT
Bill Swearingen spent a decade building CenturyLink’s cyber defense organization from the ground up, growing from an individual contributor to leading a global team of 217 across incident response, threat intelligence, red team, and forensics with a budget of more than $50 million, and serving as CISO for enterprise security in 2019. At IronNet Cybersecurity he served as lead incident commander for one of the world’s largest companies during a major cyber event and was a primary contributor to a national cybersecurity strategy for a foreign government. He co-founded TRIFIDENT in 2022, serving as vCISO and advisor to multinational companies, private equity firms, and family offices, and led cyber due diligence on a $15 billion acquisition. Swearingen co-founded SecKC, one of the largest monthly cybersecurity meetups in the world, and the Cowtown Computer Congress hackerspace in Kansas City, and served as president of FBI InfraGard Kansas City. He presented “HAKC THE POLICE” at DEF CON 27, on hacking police radar and laser systems, has spoken at Black Hat and Saintcon, and is a DEF CON 34 speaker.
Tony Howlett – CISO, UniSec CyberSecurity
Tony Howlett founded InfoHighway Communications, Houston’s first internet service provider, and built one of the first nationwide DSL networks before raising $150 million in private equity financing. As CTO of Network Security Services for 16 years, he led security audits for finance and healthcare clients and brought the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo to full PCI compliance. As CTO at Codero, he migrated more than 1,100 servers to Azure and led free data recovery for Houston businesses after Hurricane Harvey. As CISO of SecureLink, he led its first SOC 2 certification, built its privacy program, and helped guide the company to a successful exit. Howlett has served as CISO of UniSec CyberSecurity since 2021, acting as virtual CISO for clients in government, education, healthcare, and finance. A published author and columnist for Dark Reading and Security Boulevard, he serves as president of the (ISC)2 Austin chapter and on the GIAC/SANS advisory board, and has spoken at BSides on third-party risk.
Leaders Who Share the Stage
These seven leaders treat speaking as part of the work. Peters and Morton bring boardroom and trading-floor experience to RSAC and Black Hat, while Swearingen and Poer carry the hacker community’s spirit from DEF CON into enterprise security. Rosenquist and Howlett have spent decades writing and teaching for the wider industry, and Ohanian brings a psychologist’s view of why people take risks. By sharing what they have learned, they help the whole security community make better decisions.
Discover more CISOs securing their organizations:
- Powering the North: Canada’s Energy and Utilities Cybersecurity Leaders to Watch
- Behind the Vault: America’s Banking CISOs to Watch
- Built on Circuits: Electronics Manufacturing’s CISOs to Watch
- Under the Hood: Automotive Manufacturing’s Cybersecurity Leaders to Watch
- Voices From the Podium: Canada’s CISOs to Watch
John Kevin Hao is a news and feature writer covering cybersecurity, technology, and business targeted for professional audiences.