Allan Alford is Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at Mitel, formerly CISO at Forcepoint and at Polycom. In his CISO roles Alford has managed enterprise security as well as compliance with various frameworks such as GDPR, NIST SP800-171 and ISO 27001.

With more than 30 years of IT and Engineering security experience, Alford has a strong product and cloud security background, overseeing security for Mitel’s UCaaS cloud offerings and having served at Pearson as Product Information Security Officer (PISO) (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 business.

Alford is also co-host of “Defense in Depth” – a weekly podcast that focuses each episode on a specific, popular topic from the world of information security.

A perpetual learner, Alford is currently pursuing a master's degree in Information Systems and 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 also holds a CISM certification.