Igor Tsyganskiy named Chief Information Security Officer at Microsoft

Microsoft named Igor Tsyganskiy as its new Chief Information Security Officer, succeeding Bret Arsenault, who moves to a security advisory role. Tsyganskiy had joined Microsoft about four months earlier as Chief Strategy Officer, following prior roles as chief technology officer and president at Bridgewater Associates.

According to SecurityWeek, Tsyganskiy is to help guide Microsoft through a new Secure Future Initiative promising a higher default security bar for shipped software, better management of identity signing keys and faster cloud patches. SecurityWeek reports that Charlie Bell, the security boss at Microsoft, carried out the shakeup of the company's security hierarchy that handed the reins to Tsyganskiy. SecurityWeek reported that Arsenault had held the CISO title for 14 years and that his deputy, Aanchal Gupta, was to exit Microsoft's security organization at the time of the report.

Before Bridgewater, he worked as SVP Engineering at WideOrbit and as SVP of product management at Salesforce, according to SecurityWeek.

According to SecurityWeek, red teams, cybersecurity software teams and all cyber intelligence and counter intelligence functions continue to report directly to Tsyganskiy. Tsyganskiy said the organizational changes put further focus on addressing growing threat actor activity and Microsoft's rapid shift towards AI based cyber defense.

Microsoft says it earns about $20 billion a year in revenue related to cybersecurity, according to SecurityWeek.