Hartford has long been called the Insurance Capital of the World, and its cybersecurity bench reflects it. Three of the four leaders below came up through Cigna’s security organization at some point in their careers, and all four have spent most of their working lives in Connecticut. Their paths into the field were anything but uniform: government contract accounting, desktop engineering, police and fire service, and two decades climbing a single company’s security ladder. They now protect a global elevator manufacturer, an annuity and insurance group, a regional energy utility, and a specialty insurer.
Chris Lockery – VP, Cyber Defense, Otis
Chris Lockery spent more than 18 years at Cigna, starting as a network and application security specialist in 2003. He moved through vulnerability management, managed the security operations center, and directed digital forensics and incident response. As senior director of global threat management he built security operations across the U.S., Europe, and Asia, analyzing more than 1.2 trillion security events a month. He went on to serve as deputy CISO, then divisional CISO for Cigna’s U.S. Medical division, leading a 200-person global organization and an $80 million investment portfolio, before heading enterprise risk management. Lockery then built the cybersecurity program from the ground up as CISO and head of IT infrastructure at Help at Home, a healthcare services company with more than 170 sites in 13 states. After a short stint leading cyber risk and resilience at Cencora, he joined Otis in January 2026 as Vice President of Cyber Defense, leading security operations, threat intelligence, insider threat, and AI security across IT and OT environments. He teaches a graduate course on cybersecurity in healthcare at Quinnipiac University.
Sean Ryan – VP & CISO, Nassau Financial Group
Sean Ryan directed Cigna’s computer security incident response team in Bloomfield before joining Virtus Investment Partners in 2008. He served as VP and CISO there for nearly 16 years, building and maturing its cybersecurity program in an environment regulated by the SEC, FINRA, and New York’s Department of Financial Services. Ryan joined Nassau Financial Group in Hartford as VP and CISO in July 2024, where he leads cyber risk management and cyber defense.
Chris Leigh – SVP & CIO, Eversource Energy
Chris Leigh started in government contract accounting at Ernst & Young and DNE Technologies, then joined United Technologies as an audit leader in 1996. Over 15 years there he worked as an IT project manager, built UTC’s worldwide IT security program as global IT security officer, and later led its global IT compliance and risk program. At Con Edison he established the cybersecurity organization as chief information security manager. His team implemented geo-blocking of external traffic, which the U.S. Secret Service recognized during the UN General Assembly. Leigh joined Eversource in 2016 as VP and CISO and spent ten years there, restructuring the function toward proactive security across data and SCADA networks. He also partnered with the Department of Energy and national laboratories on supply chain testing for SCADA equipment, and helped develop New England’s first regional intelligence-sharing center. He became Eversource’s SVP and Chief Information Officer in March 2026, with cybersecurity still within his remit. He teaches The Role of the CISO at Boston College and cybersecurity at Central Connecticut State University, and chaired the board of Community Solutions, a nonprofit supporting people returning from incarceration.
Michael Charland – Global Information Security Officer, Hartford Steam Boiler
Michael Charland worked in emergency services before IT, as an EMT, 911 dispatcher, firefighter, and police officer, and in physical security he trained and worked patrol dogs and supervised armed and unarmed guards. He spent nine years as a lead systems engineer and analyst at Webster Bank, then managed a 4,500-desktop virtual environment at Cigna as a consultant. He joined Cigna full time and spent five years in information protection, eventually managing a team of eight engineers responsible for the company’s security products worldwide. As information security officer and infrastructure director at Masonicare he ran network, desktop, information, and physical security, then served as VP and information security officer at Bankwell. Charland has been Global Information Security Officer at Hartford Steam Boiler since April 2019, providing security governance across insurance, inspection and engineering, IoT, financial, and energy lines of business. He holds CCISO, CISSP, and HCISSP certifications.
Connecticut Careers, Built to Last
Hartford’s security leaders tend to stay and grow. Lockery spent nearly two decades climbing Cigna’s security organization before building programs of his own. Ryan held the CISO seat at Virtus for 16 years. Leigh moved from auditing defense contracts to running technology for one of New England’s largest utilities. Charland brought the discipline of police, fire, and emergency medical work into a career that runs through Connecticut’s banks, healthcare providers, and insurers. In a city whose largest employers handle risk for a living, these leaders have made managing it their career.
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John Kevin Hao is a news and feature writer covering cybersecurity, technology, and business targeted for professional audiences.