President Donald Trump has nominated Kirsten Davies to become chief information officer (CIO) at the Defense Department, according to a notice in the Congressional Record.
If confirmed to the post by the Senate, Davies would succeed Katie Arrington, who has been performing the duties of the Pentagon CIO since early March.
Davies brings to the nomination process an extensive track record in senior corporate cybersecurity roles.
She is the founder and chief executive officer of the Institute for Cyber, which is a nonprofit “with a mission to advance the safety, security, privacy, and digital integrity of experiences citizens have while using technology, AI, and digital data in their everyday lives,” according to Davies’ LinkedIn profile.
Before that, she was chief information security officer (CISO) at Unilever from 2021 to 2024, and from 2018 to 2021 was senior vice president and CISO at Estee Lauder Companies.
From 2017 to 2018, Davies was managing director and group chief security officer at Barclays in South Africa, and before that was vice president and deputy CISO at Hewlett-Packard, and global deputy CISO at Siemens.