Charleston’s cybersecurity bench is small enough that its careers tend to loop back through the same institutions. Two of the six leaders below have spent decades teaching alongside their day jobs, and one has worked at the same technical college for more than 30 years. Others came through Navy blue teams, Army red teams, and a Brooklyn startup that grew from 20 people to 300. Together they protect a health care company, a public college, a publicly traded manufacturer, an insurance technology firm, Charleston County, and a bank.
Christopher Kroner – CISO, Crossover Health
Christopher Kroner learned security in the Navy. He started as a system administrator at Fort Meade, moved into cyber analysis drafting intrusion reports on compromised Defense Department hosts, and later led Navy Blue Team remediation, taking assessment teams to remote sites and building an incident handling program for intrusions they found. After the Navy he worked as an incident handler at SPAWAR in Charleston, writing Snort signatures and custom ArcSight rules. At Benefitfocus he refreshed the security monitoring suite across two data centers and installed more than 30 network security appliances at seven sites himself, saving $500,000 in vendor fees. He then served as Information Security Officer at health IT startup PokitDok, staying through its 2018 acquisition by Change Healthcare. Kroner joined Crossover Health in 2019 as security architect and ISO, became Director of Information Security in 2023, and was named CISO in January 2024. He oversees the company’s HITRUST certification, SOC 2 reporting, identity management, and incident response programs.
Joe Gibson – CISO, College of Charleston
Joe Gibson joined Trident Technical College in 1995 as a web developer and instructional designer, building online course content and the college’s websites. He spent two decades directing its IT Training Center, leading instructional designers and software trainers while coordinating data security and privacy efforts across the college. In 2015 he became Trident’s CISO and ran its information security program for 11 years. Gibson moved to the College of Charleston as CISO in May 2026. Teaching has run alongside the whole career. He taught network and systems management in Webster University’s IT management graduate program for nearly 15 years and has taught in Trident’s cybersecurity program as an adjunct instructor since 2021.
Jody Barnes – VP of IT, CIO & CISO, Ingevity
Jody Barnes has worked in technology since 1989, when he started as an information systems analyst at Philips in Knoxville. He moved through network roles at Franklin Templeton and Covenant Health, then spent nearly seven years at MCI WorldCom in Tampa as a systems engineer and senior manager. After leading IT at LaVie Healthcare Services and infrastructure and network security at PharMerica, he spent nine years at TECO Energy, first managing network infrastructure and then information security. Barnes joined Ingevity in Charleston in 2016 as Director of Information Security. He served as interim CIO from 2022 to 2023, became CISO in February 2023, and since July 2024 has led both technology and security as Vice President of IT, CIO, and CISO.
Laryssa Jardine – COO & CISO, RateQuote
Laryssa Jardine started in advertising. At Wunderman she managed Land Rover’s digital work across ten European markets, and at Big Spaceship she produced web projects for Google Creative Lab, AOL, and Shake Shack. In 2013 she became the first product manager and 20th employee in Datalot’s New York office, an insurance technology company she helped grow to more than 300 people across three offices. She served as Datalot’s information security officer in 2020 and 2021, leading the company to SOC 2 Type 1 and Type 2 in 2020, and later stayed on through its acquisition by Centerfield as SVP of Product Development. Jardine joined RateQuote in the Charleston area in 2023 as Chief Product Officer with responsibility for compliance and security. In June 2026 she became COO, and she owns RateQuote’s information security program end to end, including HIPAA compliance and third-party audits. Along the way she also founded Bigfoot Creamery, an ice cream shop on the Hudson River in Ossining, New York.
Nicholas Maggio – Cyber Security Specialist, Charleston County Government
Nicholas Maggio spent more than 19 years as an Army signal officer, with four overseas assignments including two deployments to Iraq. On his second, with the 25th Infantry Division, he established voice and data communications for five sites across western Iraq within 75 hours of arriving and received the Bronze Star Medal. He was later hand-selected to lead the Army’s Red Team in the Defense Department’s first joint cyber exercise, earning the Meritorious Service Medal. He also built the Army’s first Red Team cyber training academy and trained six Army penetration testing teams. His final assignment was in Stuttgart, running systems operations and infrastructure for a team of 50 supporting intelligence missions across Europe. Maggio joined Charleston County Government in 2020, where he leads the county’s cybersecurity program, communicating risk to senior administration and overseeing disaster recovery and incident response planning. He holds a history degree from The Citadel, a master’s in cybersecurity, and a CISSP.
George Werbacher – Interim CISO, Live Oak Bank
George Werbacher has taught cloud security at Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz College since 2020 and authored the course himself. His practitioner career started in security operations and compliance at Acquia in Boston. He then served as an information security officer for Capital One’s U.S. card business and led cloud security advisory at Truist. He moved to Charleston to direct information security at Blackbaud, then joined Live Oak Bank in 2023 as Director of Information Security. As head of security operations, he oversaw vulnerability management, penetration testing, and cloud, product, and AI security. Werbacher became the bank’s interim CISO in June 2026. He also sits on the Cybersecurity Canon committee, which reviews and recommends essential security books, and on the computer science advisory board at the University of Texas Permian Basin.
A Coastal City That Grows Its Own
Charleston’s security leaders tend to build deep roots once they arrive. Gibson has spent 31 years in the local college system, and Barnes a decade at Ingevity after nearly 30 years elsewhere in the Southeast. Kroner came back through SPAWAR’s Charleston operation and stayed through four employers. Maggio brought two decades of Army red teaming and signal work to county government. Jardine and Werbacher arrived more recently, one from New York’s advertising and InsureTech scene and the other from Richmond’s banking sector. Three of the six teach or have taught, and in a mid-sized metro where the talent pool is still growing, that habit of passing knowledge along matters.
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John Kevin Hao is a news and feature writer covering cybersecurity, technology, and business targeted for professional audiences.