Fortinet names Steven Woodhouse first field chief information security officer for Australia

Former Queensland Department of Education chief information security officer Steven Woodhouse has been appointed networking vendor Fortinet’s newly created field CISO role.

“I look forward to helping customers understand the strength of the Fortinet offering, through the lens of experience rather than theory, and how it will help them create and protect their environment across people, processes, and technology that will lead to great customer outcomes,” the Queensland-based IT veteran said.

“Fortinet offers technology that works together through its security fabric to achieve a strong security outcome for organisations. Additionally, Fortinet has an attractive culture and is on a massive growth trajectory, which makes it a very appealing organisation to join.

“There are significant cybersecurity challenges for organisations, from ransomware running rife to the significant movement and lack of control of the edge brought on by a hybrid working environment.”

Fortinet regional director Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands Jon McGettigan said Woodhouse was selected because of his 25 years of experience across IT strategies, cybersecurity, IT service delivery, IT infrastructure, and governance and risk management.
“Steven has the leadership and management skills coupled with the experience to propel business transformation for customers in Australia.”

“His depth of experience as a CISO working inside of organisations means that he brings a unique perspective and ability to have discussions with customers that will help them understand and address their cybersecurity pain points and how to address them.”

Woodhouse worked as Queensland Department of Education’s CISO from 2019 to March this year. Prior to that, he was a self-employed, principal consultant for four years. He was also NSW Land Registry Services' chief information security officer in 2017 and 2018.

Woodhouse was awarded a Doctor of Information Technology from Charles Sturt University in 2009.

His dissertation, ‘Protecting our critical assets: a management approach to information security’ was published, along with various research papers in academic journals.