Three of the four cybersecurity leaders below spent formative years at Nokia, and the fourth spent more than two decades at the telecom operator that once ran Helsinki’s phone lines. Finland’s technology industry grew up around mobile networks, and so did many of the people now protecting its largest companies. Their careers took them to Beijing, Singapore, Riyadh, Dubai, and Istanbul before they came home to run security. They now protect a refiner, a telecom operator, a retail group, and an industrial technology company.
Antero Päivänsalo – CISO, Neste
Antero Päivänsalo spent more than 12 years working overseas in China, Singapore, and India. He joined Nokia in 2004 as director of business infrastructure for Greater China, based in Beijing, and stayed through the creation of Nokia Siemens Networks, leading its IT for Greater China and later for India, Japan, and Asia-Pacific. After a year in Singapore running the company’s project management center, he returned to Finland to lead IT performance, assurance, and operational excellence, building a new IT security framework along the way. He became head of IT security in 2015 during Nokia’s reorganization, then served as CISO and head of information security for more than seven years, focusing on critical information protection, supply chain and customer security, and employee engagement. Päivänsalo joined Neste as CISO in January 2023.
Jaakko Wallenius – VP, Resilience and Defense, Elisa
Jaakko Wallenius came to security from the commercial side. He started as a coordinator at Helsinki University of Technology, then worked in sales at Helsinki Telephone Corporation and as a vice president at Datatie. He joined Elisa in 2003 as a sales director and spent eight years in vice president roles covering regional sales, development, solutions, and product management. In 2011 he took on corporate security alongside product management, and from 2013 to January 2026 he served as Elisa’s Chief Security Officer. He now leads resilience and defense for the operator, focusing on critical infrastructure protection, preparedness, and work with government and defense-adjacent partners on collective resilience. He previously served on the board of Rugged Tooling, a software and network testing company.
Pekka Valkearanta – VP, Cybersecurity & IT Service Management, Kesko
Pekka Valkearanta started in IT support at Nokia in 1996 and went on to manage its operations center in Oulu. When those services moved to Hewlett-Packard, he led the 35-person team supporting 400 servers through the transition, later managing outsourced delivery for seven Nokia operations centers across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. He joined Kesko in 2009 and built its centralized ICT infrastructure team and group-level major incident and change management processes. After running infrastructure and application support at Metsä Group, he returned to Kesko in 2016. As business CIO for the grocery trade division he oversaw SAP, logistics, loyalty, and e-commerce systems while leading the group’s 24/7 major incident team. Valkearanta served as interim Group CIO in 2026 and became Vice President of Cybersecurity and IT Service Management in August 2026.
Teemu Eronen – Director, Cyber Security, Wärtsilä
Teemu Eronen spent much of his early career selling and building telecom businesses in emerging markets. He worked as a solution and sales manager at Ericsson and Sonera in Helsinki, then as business and marketing manager for Nokia in Riyadh. At Nokia Siemens Networks he worked across the Middle East, Istanbul, and Dubai as an account manager and business advisor before heading process excellence. He moved into security through EXFO, managing global key accounts for homeland cybersecurity, then returned to Ericsson to head cybersecurity consulting, assurance, and operations for its global services business. Eronen joined Wärtsilä in Helsinki in July 2017 as Director of Cyber Security.
Telecom Roots, Security Mandates
The common thread here is telecommunications. Päivänsalo spent 16 years at Nokia and Nokia Siemens Networks, much of it in Asia, before taking his security experience to Neste. Valkearanta started in Nokia’s IT support and spent a career running infrastructure and major incident response before taking charge of Kesko’s cybersecurity. Eronen sold networks across the Middle East before turning to cyber consulting and industrial security. Wallenius moved from telecom sales into Elisa’s top security role and now leads its resilience work. Finland’s security leaders learned how critical systems work by building and running the networks the country depends on.
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John Kevin Hao is a news and feature writer covering cybersecurity, technology, and business targeted for professional audiences.