Europe’s IT services firms run the systems, clouds, and security operations of thousands of other organizations, which makes their own defenses a matter of concern far beyond their walls. The five cybersecurity leaders below protect some of the continent’s largest consultancies, integrators, and managed service providers, from Germany and Austria to Italy, France, and Spain. Their paths into security are anything but conventional. One is a volunteer paramedic and mountain rescuer who has written a book series for business leaders on cybersecurity. Another helped run IBM’s security operations center on wheels, a converted 18-wheel truck. A third led Orange Business’s cybersecurity taskforce for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, and a fourth began as a cultural events coordinator at a theater in Caracas.
Christian Daum – Global CISO, Capgemini
Christian Daum began as a dual student in research and development at MSA The Safety Company in Berlin and worked in marketing and sales at Siemens. He started his consulting career at Deloitte, moving from intern to senior consultant in business risk and cyber risk services. Daum joined Capgemini in 2016 as a cyber security manager and went on to lead governance, risk, and compliance consulting for the DACH region, also serving as interim head of cyber security consulting. Since February 2020 he has served as Global CISO for Capgemini’s Insights & Data global business line, based in Berlin.
Thomas Masicek – Senior Vice President Cyber Security, T-Systems International
Thomas Masicek led internet services at T-Mobile Austria before joining T-Systems Austria in 2002, where he prepared its first ISO 27001 and SAS 70 certifications and has served as country security officer and CSO for Austria since 2009. As head of cyber security for a decade, he built an international mid-market cyber defense competence center, set up T-Systems’ incident response and CERT services, and launched its CISO-as-a-service offering. After leading cyber security portfolio, partner management, and strategy at Deutsche Telekom Security, Masicek became senior vice president of cyber security at T-Systems International in June 2022, leading 500 people across 16 countries on three continents. He has written a book series for DACH business leaders on cybersecurity, supply chain trust, and digital sovereignty, spoke at the IGDS World Department Store Summit in 2026, and volunteers as a paramedic and mountain rescuer.
Pompeo D’Urso – Director, Group CISO, Engineering Group
Pompeo D’Urso started at IBM as an intern and worked as an enterprise security architect for its joint venture with UniCredit Services. He then served as executive advisor and chief of technology in Europe for IBM’s X-Force Cyber Tactical Operations Center, a training, simulation, and security operations center built into an 18-wheel truck, training executives in cyber response. At UniCredit he led group incident response globally, and at Octapharma he built a new security operations center from scratch and delivered passive scanning for its OT environment. Back at IBM, he advised government clients as an associate partner and ran operations at the IBM Cyber Academy in Rome. D’Urso became Group CISO of Engineering Group in July 2026. He holds CISSP and CISM certifications and mentors at Fucina Cyber Lab.
Philippe Carles – Security Director, Orange Business
Philippe Carles began as a software developer and project leader at Thales and developed security products for Viaccess through ALTEN, later becoming a system architect and corporate security officer at Viaccess-Orca. He spent six years as CISO of digital payments company W-HA and more than five years as CISO of Orange Bank. As security director and chief security officer in Orange Business’s technology office, he led its cybersecurity taskforce for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Since April 2025 Carles has served as security director and head of security governance, risk, and compliance for Orange Business’s digital technology organization.
Manuel Castillo – Director of Global Security Operations (SOC), Inetum
Manuel Castillo worked as a cultural events coordinator at the Teatro Teresa Carreño in Caracas and as a networking technician at Movilnet before moving into IT audit and security consulting at PwC Venezuela. After consulting in Italy, he moved to Barcelona as an IT security consultant at T-Systems Iberia and then a cybersecurity manager at Deloitte España. At Capgemini he consolidated five security operations centers into one and went on to lead SOC services for its new global delivery center in Spain, a twin-core SOC in Málaga and Asturias serving business units across the EU. Castillo became director of global security operations at Inetum in June 2025, and has discussed his work on the Un Podcast Seguro podcast.
Securing Those Who Secure Others
These five leaders show the breadth of experience behind IT services security. Masicek and Carles have spent decades inside their groups, building security services and leading security through major events, while Daum grew from consulting into a global CISO seat. D’Urso and Castillo bring deep incident response and security operations experience from banking, pharmaceuticals, and managed services. Together they protect the firms that so many other organizations trust with their systems.
Discover more CISOs securing their organizations:
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- Formula for Security: The EU’s Pharmaceutical CISOs to Watch
- Care and Cover: Ireland’s Healthcare Cybersecurity Leaders to Watch
- Covered and Protected: The UK’s Insurance CISOs to Watch
- Dreaming Spires, Hardened Defences: The UK’s Higher Education CISOs to Watch
- Powering Europe: The EU’s Energy and Utilities Cybersecurity Leaders to Watch
John Kevin Hao is a news and feature writer covering cybersecurity, technology, and business targeted for professional audiences.