Microsoft’s Global CISO Igor Tsyganskiy announced several leadership updates across the security organization on Tuesday.
Tsyganskiy, who joined Microsoft in late 2023, said Geoff Belknap and Michael Srihari have been promoted to Operating CISOs reporting directly to him.
As Operating CISO for Core and Enterprise, Belknap is now responsible for Microsoft’s core infrastructure, corporate applications, and security for mergers and acquisitions. He was promoted from Corporate Vice President and Deputy CISO at Microsoft and previously served as CISO at LinkedIn.
As Operating CISO for Operations and Compliance, Srihari is responsible for the cross-cutting operations needed to defend and protect the organization. Srihari joined Microsoft in 2024 from investment management firm Bridgewater Associates.
An additional move includes Sherrod DeGrippo, who has been promoted to Deputy CISO, Customer Security Management Office, and will be responsible for customer facing CISO communications. She previously served as Director, Threat Intelligence Strategy at the company.
All cyber intelligence, counter intelligence, red teams and cybersecurity software teams will continue reporting directly to Tsyganskiy.
“To better align cybersecurity defense of Microsoft, our customers, partners and ecosystem we are continuing to optimize my organization,” Tsyganskiy noted in a LinkedIn post. “Organizational changes announced yesterday, put further focus on enabling us to address ever-increasing threat actor activity as well as our rapid shift towards AI based cyber defense.”
Before joining Microsoft as Global CISO, Tsyganskiy spent seven years at Bridgewater, managing the tech stack for the world’s largest hedge fund and is credited with overhauling the firm’s trading and back-office system. Prior to Bridgewater, Tsyganskiy served as SVP of product management at Salesforce and SVP Engineering at WideOrbit.
In November 2023, Redmond announced its ‘Secure Future Initiative,’ which promised faster cloud patches, better management of identity signing keys and products with a higher default security bar.
In 2024, Microsoft unveiled a new Deputy CISO (dCISO ) strategy as part of its broader Secure Future Initiative. To understand the reasons and potential for the evolution of the CISO role, SecurityWeek spoke to Ann Johnson (Corporate Vice President and Deputy CISO) and Mark Russinovich (CTO, Deputy CISO and Technical Fellow, Azure) as part of the CISO Conversations Series.
Related: CISO Conversations: Are Microsoft’s Deputy CISOs a Signpost to the Future?
Related: Microsoft Overhauls Cybersecurity Strategy After Scathing CSRB Report
