About James
The CISO Who Makes Security
Actually Stick
Most security professionals talk about protecting systems. James McQuiggan spent
18 years actually doing it — for industrial control systems at Siemens Energy,
where a misconfiguration isn't a data breach headline; it's a power grid outage.
That foundation shaped everything: the way he thinks about risk, the way he talks
to boards, and the way he refuses to oversimplify the things that actually matter.
"The biggest threat in most organizations isn't the hacker in the hoodie. It's the employee who got a convincing email at 4:57 on a Friday."
After building his career in operational technology security, James turned his focus
to the human side of the equation. As an Advisory CISO, he now helps
organizations evolve from checkbox security awareness training into genuine Human
Risk Management programs — ones that actually change behavior and show measurable
results. He's also one of the few advisors already helping clients prepare for
the next wave of threats: agentic AI systems that act autonomously and polymorphic
attacks that look different every single time.
Here's the part that surprises people: James has a background in musical theatre.
It sounds unrelated until you watch him deliver a keynote on deepfakes and notice
that nobody in the room is looking at their phone. His "edutainer" approach — equal
parts educator and entertainer — is what separates a session people tolerate from
one they actually talk about afterward.
As a CISSP, ISC2 chapter leader, adjunct instructor at Full Sail University (where
he teaches Cyber Threat Intelligence), and host of the Simply Secured podcast,
James stays active in the community not because he has to — but because the field
genuinely fascinates him.
CISSP
Advisory CISO
ISC2 Chapter Leader
Full Sail University Adjunct
ICS/OT Specialist
Human Risk Management
Agentic AI Threats
