Job Description:
VP, Business Group Information Security Officer, SL U.S. (BG CISO)
Job Purpose
The Vice-President, Business Group Information Security Officer, U.S. (BG CISO) serves as a senior security leader and partner to the Business Group leadership team and Business Group President. Acting as the senior security executive for the Business Group and the primary bridge between the business and enterprise Security function, the BG CISO provides independent oversight and challenge of cyber risk, resilience and security outcomes across the business group.
The U.S. BG CISO is accountable for cyber risk, resilience, and security outcomes for Sun Life’s U.S. business, a core Health & Protection platform focused on group benefits, dental, disability, life and absence-management solutions, with operations primarily in the United States and connectivity to enterprise shared services and technology teams.
Reporting directly to the global Chief Security Officer, this role is responsible for ongoing emphasis on automation, service delivery, cybersecurity resilience and secure growth. Direct and indirect reports include a team of ~10 security leads and advisors aligned to U.S. business priorities, product/platform risk, incident readiness, and stakeholder engagement.
The BG CISO partners closely with executives, technology leaders, risk partners, and the enterprise security team to protect critical assets, enable innovation, strengthen resilience, and ensure risks are understood and managed within the organization's risk appetite. The BG CISO is accountable for providing independent business-aligned security oversight while enabling growth, innovation and transformation across the Business Group. The role translates complex cyber and security risks into business impacts and shapes strategy, investments, priorities, and operating decisions across the Business Group.
Scope, Decision Authority and Key Interfaces
The Vice-President, Business Group Information Security Officer serves as the senior security executive and trusted advisor to the Business Group President and leadership team. The role is accountable for cyber risk oversight, executive advisory services, security governance, resilience alignment, regulatory engagement, and independent challenge across the assigned business group. The Vice-President translates enterprise security strategy into business-relevant actions while ensuring cyber risk, resilience, regulatory obligations, and security priorities are appropriately considered within business decisions and transformation initiatives.
The Vice-President has delegated authority to establish business-group security governance routines, direct security assessments, challenge risk decisions, require remediation planning, recommend security investment priorities, and escalate material cyber and resilience concerns through appropriate governance channels. Within approved authorities, the role provides independent advice and challenge regarding cyber risk, resilience, technology transformation, regulatory obligations, third-party risk, and risk acceptance decisions. Where management disagreement exists regarding material cyber risk acceptance, the matter will be escalated to the Global Chief Information Security Officer for review and discussion with the applicable Business Group President before a final decision is made.
The role is accountable for business-group security oversight, executive advisory services, risk escalation, independent challenge, alignment of enterprise security services to business priorities, and operational ownership of Business Group Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) platforms and associated security outcomes. The role does not own enterprise cyber defence operations, enterprise security platform engineering, vulnerability remediation, incident response operations, or second-line risk oversight except where responsibilities are expressly assigned. The Vice-President works closely with Enterprise Security leaders to ensure Business Group CIAM capabilities remain aligned with enterprise architecture, security standards, resilience requirements, and regulatory obligations.
Matters escalated to the Chief Information Security Officer would typically include significant cyber or operational resilience concerns, material breaches of risk appetite, major regulatory matters, unresolved management actions, significant third-party security issues, material client commitments, or disagreements regarding risk acceptance, prioritization, or investment decisions.
Major Accountabilities
Strategic Security Leadership and Vision
- Serve as the primary Security advisor to the Business Group executive team and Business Group President.
- Accountable for defining and driving the Business Group security strategy, aligned to enterprise security priorities and business objectives.
- Ensure security considerations are integrated into business strategy, transformation initiatives, digital strategies, and operational decision-making.
- Report significant changes in risk to appropriate levels of leadership on a periodic and event-driven basis.
- Exercise independent challenge and escalate material cyber, technology, resilience and security risks through appropriate governance forums when risk exposure exceeds established risk appetite or remediation commitments are not achieved.
- Deliver timely insights and data to enable informed executive decision-making, prioritization, and risk-based trade-offs.
- Influence and shape multi-year security, resilience, and technology risk investment strategies, ensuring resource allocation aligns with business priorities, regulatory expectations and evolving threat landscapes.
- Identify emerging threats, trends, and regulatory developments that may impact the Business Group and proactively develop mitigation strategies.
Business Partnership & Influence
- Build trusted relationships with business and technology executives.
- Act as the voice of the Business Group within the CISO organization and as the voice of the CISO organization within the Business Group.
- Facilitate effective collaboration between business stakeholders and enterprise security teams.
- Influence business group investment priorities and strategic trade-offs related to cyber risk, resilience, regulatory obligations, and secure technology adoption
Cyber Risk Management
- Accountable for the Business Group’s cyber risk posture, control effectiveness and security outcomes, ensuring material risks are identified, assessed, escalated, remediated, or formally accepted through appropriate governance and in alignment with enterprise risk appetite.
- Facilitate cyber risk assessments across application/platform/system levels to identify vulnerabilities and potential threats, analyze impacts, and recommend protection required based on threat modeling.
- Support business leaders in making informed risk decisions consistent with enterprise policies and risk appetite.
- Work with the Global Cyber threat intelligence team and monitor evolving threat landscapes and advise leaders on risk implications and required actions.
- Provide oversight of BG specific third-party cyber risk related to critical vendors, strategic partners, outsourced services, and technology providers, ensuring security risks are appropriately identified, assessed, governed, monitored and escalated as appropriate.
- Provide independent security advice on material risk acceptance decisions and ensure risks exceeding approved appetite or delegated authority are escalated to the appropriate enterprise and business governance forums.
Governance, Regulatory & Compliance
- Lead security governance activities within the Business Group.
- Oversee regular reporting and ensure alignment to global functional teams
- Represent Security on business governance forums, executive committees, and risk councils.
- Ensure effective management of applicable cybersecurity, technology risk, operational resilience, regulatory, legal, and policy requirements within the Business Group.
- Represent the Business Group during regulatory examinations, supervisory reviews, external assessments and cybersecurity-related audits.
- Hold leaders accountable to effective remediation of audit findings, regulatory issues, and control deficiencies.
Security Integration & Transformation
- Partner with the enterprise security team to ensure security services and controls meet the needs of the Business Group.
- Provide security leadership for major initiatives, acquisitions, client commitments, strategic partnerships, and technology transformations, including cyber due diligence, risk assessment, integration planning, and oversight of material remediation commitments.
- Enable secure adoption of emerging technologies, including cloud, AI, automation, and digital solutions, ensuring appropriate cybersecurity, data protection, privacy, and governance controls are embedded throughout the lifecycle.
- Provide oversight of information protection, data security, AI security and emerging technology risks ensuring critical information assets are protected and used responsibly and in compliance with regulatory and enterprise requirements.
- Champion a secure-by-design approach across technology and business initiatives.
Incident Preparedness & Resilience
- Serve as the senior security executive for the Business Group during significant cyber incidents, operational disruptions, and crisis events, coordinating with enterprise incident response, business continuity, legal, privacy, risk, communications, and business leadership to support timely decisions, escalation, recovery and reporting.
- Oversee the Business Group’s cyber and operational resilience preparedness, including alignment with business continuity and crisis management, scenario testing, crisis simulations, recovery planning and oversight of resulting remediation actions.
- Oversee the Business Group’s cyber risk assessment program across critical applications, platforms, systems, business processes, and transformation initiatives, ensuring material vulnerabilities, and threats are evaluated, prioritized, and addressed based on business impact and threat-informed analysis.
Security Culture & Awareness
- Foster a strong security culture across the Business Group.
- Promote accountability for risk management among leaders and employees.
- Drive awareness and adoption of security best practices.
Leadership & Talent Development
- Lead a network of business-aligned security leaders and professionals from across the Business Group and affiliate entities, providing strategic direction, oversight, and coordination of security priorities within a complex global matrix environment.
- Present cyber risk, resilience, security posture, and emerging threats to executive committees, governance forums, and board-level audiences as required.
- Lead through influence across complex matrixed environments.
- Represent both the enterprise security function and business group with senior executives, regulators, auditors, and within industry forums.
- Demonstrate executive presence and credibility with senior leaders.
- Balance risk management with commercial and strategic objectives.
- Drive informed decision-making under ambiguity and changing conditions.
- Act as a trusted advisor capable of challenging constructively when risks warrant escalation.
Qualifications
Education
- University degree in Information Security, Computer Science, Technology, Risk Management, Business, or a related discipline.
- Relevant security certifications preferred (CISSP, CISM, CRISC, CGEIT, or equivalent).
Experience
- 15+ years of progressive experience in cybersecurity, information security, technology risk, risk management, or related disciplines.
- Experience advising senior global executives on technology
