Heather Adkins

Heather Adkins is a cybersecurity expert with over 20 years of industry experience. As a founding member of the Google Security Team, Heather has built a global organization responsible for maintaining the safety and security of the company’s infrastructure. She developed Google’s first programs for security assurance, which have evolved to address an ever-changing threat landscape. She helps set Google-wide strategy for protecting its infrastructure and users, and has led the response to significant security incidents such as Operation Aurora. Heather has spent her career uplifting security for the world beyond her role at Google. In 2016 she volunteered to respond to threats facing the US Presidential election. In 2017 she joined the Harvard Belfer Center’s bi-partisan Defending Digital Democracy initiative, focusing on security playbooks and training for campaigns and election officials. She is currently a strategic advisor for the Silverado Policy Accelerator and is also a co-author of Building Secure and Reliable Systems (O’Reilly, 2020), which reflects her mantra that we need to have security-by-default, for everyone.