Roberto (Rob) Suárez
Vice President, Chief Information Security Officer, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield
Roberto (Rob) Suárez is the Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer of CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield (CareFirst), one of the nation’s largest not-for-profit healthcare organizations. In this role, he is responsible for developing and aligning cybersecurity initiatives with company-wide programs, business objectives and ensuring that information assets and technologies are adequately secure and resilient.
Rob has been a longstanding cybersecurity and privacy professional in the medical device and healthcare information technology (IT) industry. Prior to his role with CareFirst, Rob was the Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer at BD where he led IT, Manufacturing and Product Security that drove process, capability and maturity to build products that are secure by design, in use and through partnership with transparency and control in mind.
Rob started his career in the Software Engineering department of Siemens Corporate Research and then worked on remote service platforms for medical devices in Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics. He was a member of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Health Care Industry Cybersecurity Task Force which delivered its final report to U.S. Congress in June of 2017. The task force was created by the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 and was comprised of government and private industry leaders who are innovators in technology and pioneers in healthcare. As a continuation of the task force, established under U.S. Presidential Policy Directive 21, Rob served as a Chair for the Healthcare Sector Coordinating Council (HSCC) Med Tech Cybersecurity Risk Management Task Group, AdvaMed Cybersecurity Working Group and the Medical Device Innovation Consortium (MDIC) Cybersecurity Working Group with a focus on establishing cybersecurity frameworks, maturity models and a joint plan for improving cybersecurity for medical technology. In the spirit of transparency and collaboration, Rob has worked closely with the FDA and Department of Homeland Security on sharing cybersecurity best practices and coordinated vulnerability disclosures.
Rob is passionate about giving teams exposure to cybersecurity training and events, educating on using tools and solutions that provide customers with consistent security experiences, building in-house expertise and promoting a company-wide community of practice for cybersecurity. He is a Certified HealthCare Information Security and Privacy Professional (HCISPP) and has degrees in Computer Science from Montclair State University.