El Paso sits on an international border, beside a sister city of more than a million people, and much of its institutional life runs across that line. The six cybersecurity leaders below protect a city government, an electric utility serving two states, a consumer products company, a credit union, and a global legal technology firm, and one runs a practice bringing security programs to smaller businesses. Several took long detours to get here: through urban planning, behavioral health, Navy communications rooms, and legal technology built for litigation.
Ernesto Arriola – CISO, City of El Paso
Before he ran security for the City of El Paso, Ernesto Arriola drew its transportation plans. He spent four years as an urban planner there, preparing municipal code amendments, design guidelines, and zoning interpretations. His career had started even further afield. He supervised mental health technicians and later managed operations at a behavioral health provider in Las Cruces, and he sold life and health insurance across El Paso and southern New Mexico. Throughout, he kept a technical thread going, first administering networks and an AS/400 billing system for a behavioral health hospital in Santa Teresa, then running a small business network practice. Arriola moved into the city’s technology operation in 2011 as a business systems analyst. Project coordination and IT project management followed. He spent five years as Information Security Assurance Manager before becoming CISO in August 2021. In October 2025 he received a national InfraGard award.
Jesus Terrazas – VP IT Cloud, Infrastructure and Information Security Operations, Helen of Troy
Jesus Terrazas managed information security at GE Capital for four years in the early 2000s, then spent five years as Genpact’s Americas leader for information security and compliance. He moved into solutions architecture at Capgemini, designing enterprise systems with security controls and disaster recovery built in from the start. Terrazas joined Helen of Troy in 2017 as Manager of Information Security and Compliance. Promotions to director and then vice president followed, and since June 2024 he has led cloud, infrastructure, and information security operations for the consumer products company. His scope covers incident response, disaster recovery, and business continuity testing alongside compliance work under frameworks including SOX, PCI DSS, and ISO 27001. He also sits on the senior leadership team.
Enrique Bernal – Senior Director of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure, El Paso Electric
A credit union was where Enrique Bernal first ran technology. As VP of Information Technology at FirstLight Federal Credit Union, he oversaw systems for seven sites and 250 users across two states. Five years directing network services at Varay Systems came next. He joined El Paso Electric in 2012 as a senior consultant for IT operations, leading the company’s cybersecurity efforts in that role. After two years managing IT operations, he spent more than seven years as Information Security Manager, overseeing the incident response team and building out monitoring capabilities. Bernal became Director of Cybersecurity in 2022. Infrastructure and operations were added to his remit in stages, and he was named Senior Director of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure in August 2026.
Sal Padilla – VP of Information Systems, GECU
Sal Padilla spent years in Navy communications before anyone handed him a security program. He stood watch aboard the cruiser USS Normandy and later managed frequency spectrum operations at the Naval Communications Station in Bahrain. As an information security manager in San Diego, he mentored 15 information system security officers, directed scanning and patching for more than 2,000 workstations and 70 servers, and ran security awareness training for 1,207 users. His work there strengthened defenses across more than 40 naval vessels. Padilla joined DATAMARK in El Paso in 2021 as Director of Information Security, later adding compliance and the project management office. There he managed SOC, PCI, and FISMA Moderate assessments. He became VP of Information Systems at GECU in February 2025. He still serves as a Senior Enlisted Leader in the Navy Reserve, leading 151 members. He holds a doctorate in information technology along with CCISO, CISM, CISA, PMP, and CASP+ certifications.
Willem van den Berge – Deputy CISO, Consilio
For 14 years, Willem van den Berge was CTO of Altep, guiding its technology services, research and development, and security offerings. He then spent a year as CISO of Advanced Discovery. Since July 2018 he has been Deputy CISO at Consilio, a global legal technology and services firm, working remotely from the El Paso area. He leads a team of more than 30 across compliance, governance, privacy, identity management, the SOC, and red, purple, and blue team units. His work covers zero-trust architecture, purple team program development, and exabyte-scale redundant storage for sensitive legal data. Outside work he builds furniture, does metalwork, and experiments with privately hosted language models.
Jesus Vicente – Founder, Castile Security
Jesus Vicente founded Castile Security in 2021 to bring enterprise-grade security programs to small and medium-sized businesses. The firm offers managed security, program development, and CISO-level advisory work for healthcare, financial services, legal, and government contracting clients. He built his career in El Paso institutions first. He consulted at Currey Adkins, then spent more than four years at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso, rising from security analyst to associate director of information security. A cybersecurity engineering role at El Paso Electric followed. At Gainwell Technologies he served as an information security officer supporting state Medicaid and Medicare programs in Oklahoma, Texas, California, and Colorado. That work centered on HIPAA, NIST 800-53, and CMS security requirements.
Security Learned Somewhere Else
Almost no one on this list started in security. Arriola planned transportation corridors and managed a behavioral health unit. Padilla stood communications watches on a Navy cruiser, and van den Berge ran technology for a litigation support company for 14 years. Bernal ran IT for a credit union before a utility trusted him with its cyber program, and Terrazas moved through financial services and consulting before settling in at a consumer products company. Vicente is the youngest career in the group and the most security-focused from the start, and he has turned that experience outward into a business serving firms that cannot staff their own. What the group shares is practical grounding. Each of them learned how an organization actually works before being asked to defend one.
Discover more CISOs securing their organizations:
- Between the Lakes: Madison’s Cybersecurity Leaders to Watch
- The House Always Defends: Las Vegas’s Cybersecurity Leaders to Watch
- Victoria’s Cybersecurity Leaders to Watch
- Huntsville’s Cybersecurity Leaders to Watch
- Des Moines Cybersecurity Leaders to Watch
John Kevin Hao is a news and feature writer covering cybersecurity, technology, and business targeted for professional audiences.