Chris Merkel, Senior Director, Cyberdefense - Northwestern Mutual Chris Merkel leads Northwestern Mutual's Incident Response, Insider Risk and Detection Engineering functions. Beyond his current role, he has had a distinguished career in cybersecurity, leading global organizations and solving cutting-edge challenges in cloud security, appsec, product security, threat-informed defense strategies and automated assurance methodologies. Chris is passionate about professional development, organizing career villages, performing career counseling, mentoring and being actively involved in helping non-traditional students get their start in cybersecurity.