Six Security Leaders Who Changed Jobs in Early 2026
From Air Force intelligence to frontier AI, the CISO hiring market is moving. Here is who landed where — and what the patterns suggest.
Corporate security leadership keeps churning. The first half of 2026 has already produced a handful of notable appointments worth tracking, spanning stock exchanges, data protection firms, and AI model trainers.
SolarWinds named Justin Henkel CISO in June. Henkel arrives from OneTrust, where he served as deputy CISO, and before that spent 25 years as a US Air Force intelligence officer. SolarWinds has been under sustained regulatory scrutiny since its 2020 supply-chain compromise; the SEC charged the company and its former CISO in 2023. Henkel's hire signals the company still considers the role mission-critical.
March brought two appointments. Micro1, which trains frontier AI models, hired Kathy Wang as CISO. Wang previously held the top security seat at hospitality software developer Otelier, and before that led security functions at Discord and GitLab — two platforms with large, breach-sensitive user bases. AI infrastructure is a target. Hiring someone who has defended high-volume consumer platforms makes sense.
Green Impact Exchange, a stock exchange operator, appointed John Visneski CISO in the same month. Visneski spent time as CISO at MGM Studios, then transitioned into M&A security work after Amazon acquired that company. His career started in the US Air Force, where he advised the Secretary and Chief of Staff on cyber matters. Exchanges sit inside critical financial infrastructure; the regulatory exposure is significant.
January's standout hire: Cohesity brought on Julien Mousqueton as field CISO for Europe. Mousqueton was CTO at IT services provider Computacenter before joining. He also advises OFAC — France's national police anti-cybercrime division — as a reservist, and built ransomware.live, a real-time tracker of ransomware activity. For a data security vendor selling into European enterprise, his profile checks two boxes at once: operational credibility and deep threat intelligence.
The through-line across these hires is military and law-enforcement pedigree paired with private-sector depth. Three of the four appointees carry US Air Force or French law-enforcement backgrounds. That pattern has been building for several years and shows no sign of reversing.
If you are in a role that was recently affected by one of these moves, review any third-party vendor agreements your organisation holds with SolarWinds or Cohesity. Leadership transitions are a natural moment for vendors to renegotiate terms or shift support priorities. Read any contract renewal notices carefully.
