Birmingham’s cybersecurity bench draws from an unusually wide set of starting points. Among the six leaders below are a former commanding officer of the Navy’s cyber defense operations, a police sergeant who spent 17 years on patrol before taking charge of the city’s information security, and an SAP consultant who became a published author before he ever ran a security team. Others came through agile engineering at a national retailer, a decade of channel distribution, and a Genius Bar. They now protect a construction materials producer, a same-day delivery platform, a diversified family-owned conglomerate, city government, and a technology solutions provider, and one advises companies that need a security leader on demand.
Harold Cole – VP, Information Security, Vulcan Materials
Harold Cole spent more than two decades as a U.S. Navy officer working in cyber, intelligence, and electronic warfare. Early on he led a team of 17 NSA computer scientists researching Microsoft vulnerabilities and contributed to the NSA’s Windows Security Guide. He went on to run signals intelligence and electronic warfare aboard the USS Enterprise, serve as NSA Georgia’s first military Remote Operations Center senior watch officer, and act as executive assistant to the commander of Fleet Cyber Command. From 2019 to 2021 he was Commanding Officer of Navy Cyber Defense Operations Command, leading more than 850 people responsible for over 500,000 endpoints across 170 networks. Under his command the Navy deployed its first endpoint detection and response capability across a 400,000-node network. He also oversaw the Navy Red Team. After leaving active service in 2023 and a stint consulting with Deep Water Point & Associates, Cole joined Vulcan Materials in June 2024 as Vice President of Information Security.
Jessi Keegan – VP of Cybersecurity, Shipt
Jessi Keegan started in Target’s Technology Leadership Program in 2013 and spent eight years at the retailer. She worked as a scrum master and lead scrum master, then as a senior engineering manager for cloud and compute and later for assets protection. That was where security first became part of her day job, and she stayed with it. Keegan joined Shipt in 2021 as Director of Cybersecurity and was promoted to VP of Cybersecurity in August 2022. Her team protects shoppers and drivers with measures such as in-app photo identity verification for inactive accounts and picture proof of delivery, and runs scam awareness training for staff and customer service teams. She treats organized retail crime as a reason to share intelligence across companies rather than defend alone. Her advice to women entering the field is to find more than one mentor: someone to listen, someone to challenge, and someone to cheer.
Bryan Bee – CISO & SVP of Enterprise Applications, EBSCO Industries
Bryan Bee began his career as a financial analyst at International Paper, where he served as lead SAP architect for procurement on a global transformation. He spent nine years at SAP, reaching its Platinum consultant designation and publishing with SAP Press. As head of global practices for SAP’s supplier relationship management product, he led 60 consultants and helped move the practice toward SaaS after SAP acquired Ariba. Bee joined EBSCO Industries in 2014 to direct enterprise IT, modernizing its SAP platforms and building a business intelligence practice. Security became part of his remit in 2020, when he took on cybersecurity operations alongside enterprise applications and analytics. He has served as CISO and SVP of Enterprise Applications since May 2023, overseeing the security operations center, governance, risk and compliance, identity and access management, and security architecture.
Marsha Butler – Information Security Officer, City of Birmingham
Marsha Butler has worked for the City of Birmingham for nearly 24 years. For the first 17 and a half of them she was a police sergeant. While still in law enforcement she earned a bachelor’s degree in management information systems from Strayer University’s Birmingham campus. She went on to earn a master’s in cybersecurity and information assurance from Western Governors University. Butler became the city’s Information Security Officer in July 2020. She conducts security assessments to find network and system vulnerabilities, leads the response to attacks on city networks, and supervises the work of her department. She holds a CISSP.
Alex Ryals – CISO & SVP, Solutions, MicroAge
Alex Ryals started as a system administrator at FedEx in Memphis, managing more than 3,000 servers in the company’s data center. He spent nearly 13 years at Pepperweed Consulting, working up from consultant to CTO, and stayed through its acquisition by Avnet. There he built solution practices in security, cloud, analytics, and IoT, and later led the Security and Networking business unit. At Tech Data and then TD SYNNEX he led global security solutions, a business selling products from more than 250 cybersecurity vendors to over 20,000 channel partners. His teams also helped launch a cyber range in Tempe, Arizona, for partner training. After two years running global channel sales at Ping Identity, Ryals joined MicroAge in 2024. He became CISO in January 2025 and added SVP of Solutions in November 2025. He is responsible for internal cybersecurity and IT alongside the company’s presales and delivery teams. He holds a computer science degree from Auburn University.
Ryan Black – Founder & Principal, Sudo Foundry
Ryan Black has served as CISO twice in the past four years. At Origami Risk, an 800-person InsurTech firm, he led an 11-person security team, reported to the general counsel, and briefed the board quarterly. He reprioritized more than a third of the budget within six months and improved phishing metrics by 70%. At BlackCloak he served as CISO and functional CIO, leading an 18-person organization that included a 15-analyst security operations center serving executives and high-net-worth clients. Before that, he led security at Respond Software through its acquisition by FireEye. At Mandiant he guided the team that achieved FedRAMP Ready High and IL-5 for Mandiant Advantage in less than half the time and staff of its earlier FedRAMP Moderate offering, and supported due diligence for Mandiant’s acquisition by Google Cloud. He had earlier run security operations at Bugcrowd and grown HP’s Fortify on Demand static testing team fourfold. His career began as a Mac Genius at Apple and a technical support analyst at Aflac. In December 2025 Black founded Sudo Foundry in Birmingham, which offers fractional and interim CISO engagements and compliance advisory across SOC 2, FedRAMP, and StateRAMP. As a long-time RVer, he is also building Campkin.app, an RV trip-planning platform with a companion IoT device.
A City of Second Careers
Few of these leaders started in security, and most arrived by way of something else entirely. Cole spent his career in Navy cyber and intelligence commands before a construction materials company brought him home to Alabama. Butler patrolled Birmingham’s streets for 17 years before defending its networks. Bee rose through SAP procurement consulting, Keegan through agile engineering at Target, and Ryals through two decades of solution architecture and channel distribution. Black worked his way from an Apple store to the CISO seat at two companies before building his own. What they share is a willingness to learn security in the middle of a career rather than at the start of one. In a city built on reinvention, that fits.
Discover more CISOs securing their organizations:
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John Kevin Hao is a news and feature writer covering cybersecurity, technology, and business targeted for professional audiences.