Honolulu sits more than 2,000 miles from the nearest major U.S. city, and its security leaders have built careers that reflect both that isolation and the reach it demands. One of the five cybersecurity leaders below led the United Nations’ first global program against cybercrime. Another has worked at the University of Hawai’i for 44 years. A third still writes production code at the insurance group where he is CIO and CISO. Between them they protect Hawaii’s two biggest banks, its public university system, a hotel and resort group, and an insurance and investment holding company.
Adam Palmer – CISO, First Hawaiian Bank
Adam Palmer began as a U.S. Navy JAG officer at Pearl Harbor, prosecuting cybercrime and training military prosecutors worldwide. He received the Howell Award as the top Navy JAG reservist. As policy counsel at Public Interest Registry he built the first cybersecurity and DNS abuse prevention program for the .ORG domain, living and working in Beijing to support its expansion into China. He went on to create the Norton Cybersecurity Institute at Symantec and to lead the UN’s first Global Programme Against Cybercrime in Vienna, supporting law enforcement across more than 30 nations. Palmer then built FireEye’s international cybersecurity policy program from Germany and Singapore, directed global cyber risk and controls assurance across 13 countries at Banco Santander, where he also sat on a EUROPOL cybersecurity advisory board, and served as chief cybersecurity strategist for Tenable across EMEA and APAC. He returned to Honolulu as CISO of First Hawaiian Bank in May 2021. The bank was named to the 2024 Forbes list of the 50 most cyber-secure U.S. banks, and Palmer was named to the 2025 CISO Connect Top 100.
Ryan Field – EVP & CISO, Bank of Hawaii
Ryan Field started in IT strategy and security at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Boston before moving to Honolulu, where he directed a project management office at Pelatron. At KPMG he led operations, infrastructure, and security for the State of Hawaii’s integrated eligibility system, a project budgeted at about $120 million. He first joined Bank of Hawaii in 2015 as vice president of IT risk and security, building its vendor risk management program. At American Savings Bank he served as SVP and CISO for three years, saving $3 million in 2019 by consolidating tools, before becoming its CTO. Field returned to Bank of Hawaii as EVP and CISO in April 2021. He served as an information protection officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve and taught at Hawaii Pacific University for nearly five years. He sits on advisory boards for Glilot Capital Partners, HackNotice, Strategic Cyber Ventures, VigiTrust, and the Security Advisor Alliance.
Jodi Ito – CISO, University of Hawai’i System
Jodi Ito has worked at the University of Hawai’i since 1982 and has served as CISO of the UH System since 2000. She is responsible for security across all 10 campuses and affiliated research centers, including policy, risk analysis, incident investigations, and training. She has organized large-scale red and blue team exercises on the UH cyber range involving students, the Hawaii National Guard, the military, and state and federal agencies. Ito is principal investigator and program director for the NSA’s GenCyber camps in Hawaii, which introduce high school students and teachers to cybersecurity. She is also co-principal investigator on NSF and NSA CyberCorps Scholarship for Service grants that fund full scholarships for cybersecurity students. She has chaired CyberHawaii’s board of directors since 2020, chaired the program committee for the 2022 EDUCAUSE Annual Conference, and has been a lead organizer for CompuGirls Hawaii. She earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science at UH Mānoa.
Peter Hunt – Director, IT Security & Compliance, Outrigger Hospitality Group
Peter Hunt has spent 19 years in hospitality technology. He started as IT manager at the Four Seasons Hotel Philadelphia, then directed IT at Four Seasons properties in Atlanta, on Lanai, and at the Biltmore in Santa Barbara. He moved into security and compliance at Legacy Ventures Hospitality in Atlanta as IT compliance manager and later director. Hunt joined Outrigger Hospitality Group in Honolulu in 2021 and has served as Director of IT Security and Compliance since April 2022, with a focus on protecting both the guest and employee experience. He holds a business degree in finance and real estate from Temple University’s Fox School of Business.
Jeffrey Fabry – VP, CIO & CISO, Tradewind Group
Jeffrey Fabry has worked in insurance technology for more than 40 years. He started as a software developer at Pekin Insurance in 1982 and spent nearly 15 years at RLI Insurance, including 11 as director of IT. After serving as CIO of Material Control Systems and co-founding J-tec Industries, he moved to Honolulu in 2005 as SVP of IT, CIO, and CISO of Island Insurance. Since 2019 he has served as VP, CIO, and CISO of Tradewind Group, Island Insurance’s parent, overseeing technology and security for its insurance and agency businesses and providing IT guidance to its investment portfolio companies. His team implemented the Guidewire Insurance Suite across more than 10 lines of business and moved many of the group’s companies to SaaS-only operations, eliminating both on-premises and cloud data centers. Fabry still works as a full-stack developer, building the group’s data warehouse, agency portal, quoting tools, and online bill pay systems. He holds the CPCU designation.
Security on an Island
Honolulu’s security leaders carry an unusual mix of global reach and local depth. Palmer and Field both brought experience from far beyond Hawaii, Palmer through the UN, FireEye, and Santander and Field through PwC and KPMG, before coming home to lead the state’s two largest banks. Ito has defended the University of Hawai’i for more than four decades and spent much of that time building the next generation of island security talent. Hunt brought 19 years of hotel technology to Outrigger, and Fabry still writes code alongside running security for an insurance group. On an island where help is a long flight away, that combination of broad experience and hands-on self-reliance is exactly what the job demands.
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John Kevin Hao is a news and feature writer covering cybersecurity, technology, and business targeted for professional audiences.