New Orleans tests its infrastructure harder than most cities, and its security leaders know it. One of the five cybersecurity leaders below built the disaster recovery approach that kept a bank’s branch and call center software running through Hurricane Katrina. Another spent six years as a Navy electronics technician in Italy before working in a computer forensics lab and running IT for a police department. The rest came up through IT audit, Air Force cyber operations, and a decade of systems administration at a university. They protect two banks, a regional gas utility, and two universities, one of them now from a thousand miles away.
Brian Mayeur – CISO, Hancock Whitney
Brian Mayeur served as a Navy electronics technician in Gaeta, Italy, from 1994 to 2000. Back home he worked as a forensic specialist and security engineer at the Gulf Coast Computer Forensics Lab, then directed management information systems for the Kenner Police Department. He spent two years as a control systems engineer before moving into security consulting and engineering, then joined Whitney National Bank as an information security architect in 2009. After a stint in information security at Entergy, he joined Hancock Whitney in 2012 as an enterprise security architect and manager. He went on to lead enterprise security architecture and engineering as SVP and director, and has served as CISO since July 2023. His specialties include security architecture, identity and role management, cloud and application security, and data loss prevention.
Kevin Comfort – CISO, Delta Utilities
Kevin Comfort started as an IT support technician at the Louisiana Department of Corrections and spent more than two years interning at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana. He came to security through audit, working as an IT auditor at Freddie Mac and then Blue Cross before becoming an IT practice engineer there. At GE Capital he moved into information security governance and led a vulnerability management team in security operations, then led vulnerability management for GE Power. Comfort spent four years at Entergy managing security intelligence and then security architecture. At Amedisys he rose from senior director of security engineering to VP of cybersecurity engineering and operations, serving as acting CISO for eight months. He joined Delta Utilities in April 2025 as cybersecurity director and was named CISO in April 2026.
Gregory Jones – CISO, Xavier University of Louisiana
Gregory Jones served as a cyber systems operator in the U.S. Air Force from 2014 to 2017. After leaving the service he worked as a cybersecurity consultant for a Defense Department contractor, then as a senior IT audit consultant at the accounting firm Postlethwaite & Netterville. He spent more than two years as a senior security engineer at DXC Technology in the New Orleans area. Jones joined Xavier University of Louisiana as CISO in May 2021. His work there covers enterprise security frameworks, incident response, and NIST and FISMA compliance.
Lanaux Rareshide – VP & Information Security Officer, Fidelity Bank
Lanaux Rareshide spent 20 years at Whitney National Bank as a project manager, replacing the bank’s branch network infrastructure and leading development of a new teller application with a team of more than 20 and a $6.9 million budget. At Lend Lease Real Estate Investments in Atlanta he ran Y2K readiness projects and built the IT project management office. He then spent nearly nine years at Capital One, where he supported its branch and call center customer service software. He also developed the disaster recovery approach for that system, which stayed stable throughout Hurricane Katrina. Rareshide moved to Fidelity Homestead Savings Bank in 2011 as IT manager and has served as VP and Information Security Officer at Fidelity Bank since January 2014.
Jeremy Pelegrin – (Former) CISO, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Jeremy Pelegrin spent more than 16 years at Tulane University. He first worked there as a consultant through CommTech Industries, overseeing email and authentication systems and stepping into a hybrid security role when the information security office was short-staffed. He then spent a decade as senior systems administrator and infrastructure team lead, building Tulane’s identity and access management systems and moving its email and file storage to the cloud. After a year leading IT project delivery, he took over the information security office during the COVID pandemic and served as CISO from 2020 to 2025. During that time he implemented MFA for email and privileged access, launched a university-wide ransomware protection campaign, and guided security requirements for federally funded research. Pelegrin then served as CISO of the University of Massachusetts Amherst from August 2025 to August 2026, leading security for the Massachusetts flagship remotely from New Orleans.
Built for the Next Storm
What runs through this group is resilience learned the hard way. Rareshide designed the disaster recovery plan that held through Katrina. Mayeur came out of computer forensics and police IT before spending 14 years securing a Gulf Coast bank. Comfort audited systems before he defended them, and Jones went from Air Force cyber operations to running security at a university. Pelegrin built Tulane’s infrastructure for a decade before leading its security, then proved a CISO could serve a university 1,500 miles away. In a city where the next disruption is never far off, these leaders build for continuity first.
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John Kevin Hao is a news and feature writer covering cybersecurity, technology, and business targeted for professional audiences.