Nevada’s cybersecurity leadership community extends well beyond the casino floor. The leaders in this feature are based in the Silver State and working across healthcare advisory, environmental research, managed IT services, automotive, and consulting practices that serve clients far beyond state lines. Their backgrounds span military service, enterprise healthcare, defense contracting, serial entrepreneurship, and more than two decades of building security programs in environments where the stakes are operational, regulatory, and reputational all at once.
Jason Elrod — Founder, Limitless Cyber
Jason Elrod founded Limitless Cyber from the Greater Reno area, an executive advisory and fractional CISO practice serving healthcare organizations, health IT companies, and PE-backed portfolio companies navigating complex risk landscapes and regulatory pressure. He also serves as CISO of MultiCare Health System, a multi-billion-dollar healthcare system where he leads security across more than 70 entities within a corporate portfolio of 120-plus joint venture and wholly owned subsidiaries, won the 2025 ORBIE Award for CISO of the Year in the large enterprise category, and presents to the board and a dedicated cybersecurity committee on a quarterly basis. He drove AI-powered automation across SOC operations and IAM workflows that reduced employee and vendor onboarding from five weeks to under one week, established the enterprise Zero Trust program, and chairs the enterprise Data Governance Committee while co-chairing the AI Governance Committee. He is also the author of Cyber CISO Marksmanship: Hitting the Mark in Cybersecurity Leadership, published by CRC Press, host of the Drink Coffee. Do Cool Stuff. podcast, a NightDragon advisor, and a Global Ambassador for the Global Council for Responsible AI. Fifteen years in healthcare security at that scale produces a particular kind of clarity about what matters and what does not. His work across platforms reflects that.
Colin Bitterfield — Chief Information Security Officer, Temple of Epiphany
Las Vegas-based Colin Bitterfield runs Temple of Epiphany, a consulting practice specializing in AI-augmented security operations, regulatory compliance automation, and zero trust architecture for Fortune 500 clients and high-growth technology companies. His recent client work includes a principal security consultant engagement at Verizon Wireless and TracFone, where he led an enterprise-wide security tool migration from Qualys to Tenable across 174 applications and enabled a 40 percent reduction in organizational vulnerabilities, and a GRC consulting engagement at Spire Global supporting CMMC Level 2 certification for DoD contractor requirements. His background includes leading cybersecurity for defense systems supporting more than 100 teams and 1.4 million users and developing more than 3,300 cybersecurity professionals. He has published practitioner guides including The Executive’s Guide to AI Effectiveness and Building Security Culture: Military to Startups, and serves on a company advisory board. His approach centers on AI-augmented security operations, using fine-tuned custom models on compliance datasets and Python automation to reduce audit time and accelerate security workflows without sacrificing governance rigor.
Shannon Wilkinson — Chief Information Officer and Chief Information Security Officer, Findlay Automotive Group
Before stepping into the dual CIO and CISO role at Findlay Automotive Group in September 2024, Shannon Wilkinson spent five years founding and leading Tego Cyber, a Las Vegas-based cybersecurity company building automated threat correlation and threat hunting solutions to help organizations find threats buried within their own security stacks. Before Tego Cyber, she founded Axiom Cyber Solutions, an MSSP focused on building holistic cybersecurity protection for small and medium businesses, combining a proprietary threat intelligence platform, next-generation firewall updates, EDR, deception grid technology, and 24/7 SOC monitoring. Two consecutive security company foundings before moving into an enterprise executive role is not a typical path to a CISO seat, and it shapes how she approaches security at one of the largest automotive dealership groups in the United States. She also serves as a founding board member of the Healthcare Heroes Foundation, a Las Vegas nonprofit established during the COVID-19 pandemic to support front-line healthcare workers.
Ryan Coots — Chief Information Security Officer, Desert Research Institute
Ryan Coots stepped into the CISO role at the Desert Research Institute in March 2025 after more than three years as information security officer at the same organization, which itself followed years as senior network engineer, network administrator, and IT specialist at DRI going back to 2013. That twelve-plus year arc inside a single environmental research institution gives him the kind of operational fluency that external hires cannot replicate quickly. He serves as incident commander for all high-impact security incidents, oversees the network and operational security department, manages cybersecurity insurance procurement and renewal, and leads compliance documentation and security awareness programs for faculty and staff across a research environment where federal funding obligations and data sensitivity requirements are a constant operational reality. His progression from IT specialist to CISO inside one organization reflects patient, ground-up program development.
Mark Gavin — Chief Information Security Officer, Effortless Office
Mark Gavin has spent more than nine years at Effortless Office, moving from senior network architect to CISO in July 2024, where he now leads enterprise cybersecurity strategy for a multi-tenant managed services environment supporting regulated and high-availability customer infrastructures. Before his full-time focus at Effortless Office, he founded and ran Silver State Technologies for nearly nineteen years, a Las Vegas-based managed IT services practice delivering infrastructure, cloud, and security solutions to small and mid-sized organizations across diverse industries. His earlier career includes IT director roles at Don Best Sports and Desert Plumbing and Heating, and a security analyst role at the Southern Nevada Health District. That combination of nearly two decades running his own managed services practice and nearly a decade of architecture and security leadership inside a multi-tenant environment gives him a grounded, client-first understanding of what security looks like when it has to work across many different organizations simultaneously.
Nevada’s Security Talent Runs Deeper Than the Strip
The leaders in this feature reflect something important about Nevada’s cybersecurity community: it is more diverse, more experienced, and more broadly connected than the gaming industry alone would suggest. Two of these leaders founded cybersecurity companies before moving into enterprise roles. One built a career from the IT help desk up inside a single research institution. Another spent nearly two decades running his own managed services practice before stepping into a CISO seat. And one operates simultaneously as a healthcare system CISO, a fractional CISO practice founder, a published author, and a global AI governance ambassador. The Strip gets the attention. The work happens everywhere else too.
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