Allan Alford has served as Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at Mitel, Forcepoint and Polycom.  In his CISO roles Alford has managed enterprise, cloud and product security strategy and overseen compliance with various frameworks and regulatory requirements such as DFARS, GDPR, ISO 27001 and others.

With more than 20 years of IT and Engineering security management experience, he has a strong product and cloud security background as well.  Alford oversaw security for Mitel’s UCaaS and UC cloud offerings and served at Pearson as Product Information Security Officer, where he created the security practice for a massive-scale, companywide cloud transformation program.  Alford also built and led the product security program at Polycom, integrating it fully into the product delivery process by aligning security with the business.

He is co-host of Defense in Depth – a weekly podcast that focuses each episode on a specific, popular topic from the world of information security.  Alford also works to give back to the security community by authoring articles, contributing original content on various social media sites, and speaking at conferences and summits.

A perpetual learner, Alford is pursuing a master's degree in Information Systems & Security from Our Lady of the Lake University and received a bachelor's degree in Liberal Arts with a focus on leadership from DePaul University.  Alford holds a CISM certification.