Automotive manufacturing runs on tightly linked plants, suppliers, and connected vehicles, and the seven cybersecurity leaders below protect everything from assembly lines to battery production to the software inside the car. Their routes into the role are some of the most varied in the industry. One worked as a Tulsa police officer and commanded two Army Reserve battalions. Another designed chips for the AMD Athlon 64 before moving into vehicle security. A third started as a quality audit supervisor on a Mercedes-Benz plant floor in 1995, and a fourth spent 15 years at Chrysler in finance, purchasing, and supplier quality. Together they lead security for automakers, a new EV brand, a battery venture, and some of the industry’s largest suppliers.
Angela Jago – VP of Network Operations & CISO, Dana Incorporated
Angela Jago served as a police officer in Tulsa and spent 29 years in the U.S. Army Reserve, leading intelligence data enterprises and holding two successive battalion commands. At the Department of Defense she became deputy director for critical technology protection in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, overseeing the office’s responsibilities to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, supply chain risk management, and programs protecting the country’s most critical technologies. She previously led the department’s Unauthorized Disclosure Program Management Office. At Dow, she built a global security and intelligence program in under nine months, including a security operations center, a fusion analysis center, and the company’s first holistic insider threat program. She also directed Dow’s information protection and data privacy office and its GRC function, delivering ISO 27001 and NIS2 readiness, and served on its AI governance practice. Jago became VP of network operations and CISO at Dana Incorporated in July 2026, and she leads women’s empowerment initiatives in technology and security.
Jesse Bociek – CSO, Tenneco
Jesse Bociek spent more than 12 years at Quad, rising from systems engineer to information security lead, then serving as chief compliance and privacy officer and CISO. He went on to serve as CISO of Johnson Controls for four years. Bociek joined Tenneco as chief security officer in February 2020, serving as executive owner for cybersecurity, privacy, AI governance, and IT risk, and leading teams across infrastructure, applications, ERP, and enterprise AI strategy. Across his career he has recovered global operations from a ransomware event, led technology and risk on transactions over $1 billion, including four over $10 billion, and briefed boards every quarter since 2010. He writes about enterprise AI and IT/OT convergence and recently completed MIT’s Chief Digital Officer and AI Transformation program.
Josh Jaffe – CISO, Scout Motors
Josh Jaffe started as a network administrator at Alltel Communications before spending five years as an intelligence manager with the Department of Defense, leading cybersecurity and intelligence projects based in East Africa and the Middle East and publishing reports briefed to Congress and the Executive Branch. At Deloitte he led cybersecurity maturity assessments and tabletop exercises for public sector and Fortune 500 clients. He directed information security risk and governance at Emerson, then served as global CISO for Mercedes-Benz Financial Services USA and Daimler Mobility AG, followed by three years as VP of cybersecurity at Dell Technologies. Jaffe became CISO of Scout Motors in May 2023. He sits on the World Economic Forum’s Cybersecurity and Trust Steering Committee and SAP’s Security Advisory Board, and serves as board president of the Global Center for Cybersecurity at Cortex.
Justin Klein Keane – CISO, Subaru of America
Justin Klein Keane has more than 30 years in security, starting as a developer on government contracts. At the University of Pennsylvania, he built the security program from a team of one to five, developed an open source SIEM and distributed honeypots, and created the LAMPSecurity capture-the-flag training project recognized by SANS. He led the OWASP Philadelphia chapter for five years and was the first security hire at ThingWorx, where he developed a cryptographic identity scheme for IoT authentication. He then built security operations at Main Line Health and Penn Medicine, grew Security Risk Advisors’ SOC from about 20 people to more than 130 across the US, Hawaii, and Ireland, served as an incident commander at Meta, and led global digital forensics and incident response at CSL. Klein Keane became CISO of Subaru of America in December 2025, leading a 10-person team and coordinating with Subaru security teams in Japan.
Lisa Evans – CIO, CISO & CTO, Mercedes-Benz U.S. International
Lisa Evans joined Mercedes-Benz U.S. International in Vance, Alabama, in 1995 as a quality audit supervisor and spent her early career in quality and automotive development engineering. She later managed HR safety, security, and medical before moving into IT, where she managed infrastructure and operations for 10,000 users, served as permanent major incident manager for two years, and cut failed changes by 20%. As IT manager for application development, she oversaw production MES and SAP systems and trained more than 100 managers through a leadership program she developed. Evans has served as CIO, CISO, and CTO since 2014, overseeing IT functions from cybersecurity to disaster recovery for more than 10,000 users across six campuses in the US and Mexico. She led the carve-out from a legacy ERP system to three global SAP applications and launched the Mercedes-Benz Innovation Challenge for Startups.
Skotti Fietsam – SVP Supply Chain and CIO/CISO, Accuride Corporation
Skotti Fietsam spent more than 15 years at Chrysler, starting as a financial analyst on the minivan platform and moving through purchasing, supplier quality, and outsourcing, where she negotiated a $400 million IT services contract and earned a VP Excellence Award for an effort that saved $8 million a year in transmission warranty costs. At BorgWarner she led global supplier development and launched a plant in Brazil that produced the country’s first timing chain, then ran the company’s largest timing systems plant in Mexico, growing it from $45 million to $110 million in two years. After leading a 1,500-person Amazon fulfillment center, Fietsam joined Accuride Corporation in October 2021 and now leads global supply chain and IT as SVP supply chain and CIO/CISO, cutting operational costs by 20% through supply chain and technology integration. She is a Six Sigma Black Belt with a finance MBA and spoke at Automotive Logistics in 2026.
Alan Gonzalez – Head of Security and Architecture – Blue Oval Battery (CISO), Ford Motor Company
Alan Gonzalez began as a CAD engineer at a PowerPC startup and at Sun Microsystems, then worked on the Athlon 64 microprocessor at AMD. He spent 13 years at Ford, managing more than 8,000 servers, architecting applications and security, and leading connected vehicle research, where he co-invented a patented technique for storing decryption keys in mobile apps. At HARMAN he built secure development frameworks for automotive products and led GDPR and CCPA compliance, followed by product security work for medical clouds and devices at Johnson & Johnson. At Plume Design, he rose to director of security and privacy and CISO, securing smart home services for more than 60 million devices and 250 partners. Gonzalez returned to Ford in August 2026 as head of security and architecture for Blue Oval Battery.
From the Plant Floor to the Connected Car
These seven leaders show how many different skills automotive security now demands. Jago and Jaffe brought defense and intelligence experience to manufacturing, while Bociek and Klein Keane built their careers in enterprise security and incident response. Evans and Fietsam rose through quality, supply chain, and operations before taking on technology and security, and Gonzalez has carried a chip designer’s precision into vehicle and battery security. As vehicles, plants, and suppliers become more connected, these leaders keep the industry’s production lines and products secure.
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.