Chief Security Officer (CSO)

ABOUT US

We’re the world’s leading provider of secure financial messaging services, headquartered in Belgium. We are the way the world moves value – across borders, through cities and overseas. No other organisation can address the scale, precision, pace and trust that this demands, and we’re proud to support the global economy. 

We’re unique too. We were established to find a better way for the global financial community to move value – a reliable, safe and secure approach that the community can trust, completely. We’re always striving to be better and are constantly evolving in an ever-changing landscape, without undermining that trust. Five decades on, our vibrant community reflects the complexity and diversity of the financial ecosystem. We innovate diligently, test exhaustively, then implement fast. In a connected and exciting era, our mission has never been more relevant. Swift now has a presence in 200+ countries and legal territories to serve a community of more than 12,000 banks and financial institutions.   

Candidates from the United States can also be considered for this role, with the expectation of eventually relocating to Belgium.

Job Description Summary

Information technology lies at the heart of Swift's services and plays a vital and ever-expanding role in Swift's mission. Swift's information technology environment is highly distributed and diverse, with strong leadership and coordination. Swift seeks an experienced, energetic, engaging and visionary security leader who wants to become part of an exciting, vibrant community of information technology professionals supporting Swift's mission.
We’ve been driving a program of transformation and investment across the IT area to deliver an agile, responsive, and highly business engaged technology capability that can meet the high expectations of the Swift organization, providing a highly resilient and secure network that supports transactions representing trillions of dollars per day and carrying more than 10 billion transactions per year.
Security plays a vital role in ensuring the operational integrity of Swift's services and maintaining its reputation as a global service provider to the industry. With cyber security a fundamental business enabler, the organization is seeking a strong and knowledgeable Chief Security Officer (CSO) to provide vision, strategy, broad-based planning, and hands-on responsibility.
By leading the Global Security team (GS), you will report to the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and lead a team of security professionals organized around the core domains of: Cyber Fusion Centre, Cyber Threat Management, Attack Surface Management, Identity and Access Management, Governance and Strategy, Security in Business, Corporate (Physical) Security, and Zero Trust Security
Your role is to lead and support the Global Security organization to meet its strategic objectives and enable your teams to be successful by ensuring a common vision and aligned priorities. With a focus on delivery, collaboration, and efficiency, you will help teams identify and solve impediments. Beyond this, your role is also to support interactions with the rest of the organization and key external stakeholders, including regulators and customers.
The role will be location flexible across our locations in EMEA with preference for Belgium, with the UK or The Netherlands as options reporting to the CTO who is based in Virginia. The United States can also be considered for the short term, but with eventual location of EMEA. The CSO is a member of the Technology Platform Management Team, and plays a key role in Swift's IT and information security strategy working closely with senior department leadership, industry leaders, government agencies and the Swift Board and community. The incumbent will be an advocate for Swift's overall information security needs.
The role is responsible for the delivery of a comprehensive information security strategy and operations to optimize the security posture of the organization. The role leads the development and implementation of a security program that leverages collaboration and company-wide resources, facilitates information security governance, advises senior leadership on security direction and resource investments, and designs appropriate policies to manage information security risk.
The mission is to build, evolve and communicate our overall cyber strategy in line with the changing threat landscape, Swift business and technology evolution, industry best practices and regulatory changes. The CSO will lead a team of more than 200 professionals located in key Swift office geographic locations and will be responsible for translating the strategy into an execution plan and for driving its implementation for both change and run activities. The CSO is also responsible for identifying and progre