Roberto (Rob) Suárez is a cybersecurity and privacy professional in the medical device and healthcare IT industry. At BD, he serves as Chief Information Security Officer and strategic leader for information security. In this role he is responsible for developing and aligning security initiatives with company-wide programs, business objectives and ensuring that information assets and technologies used in BD products, manufacturing, service, enterprise IT, and third-party partners are adequately secure and resilient.
Prior to this role, Mr. Suárez was the Director of Product Security and led a center of excellence for Product Security that drives process, capability and maturity to build products that are secure by design, in use and through partnership with transparency and control in mind. Giving product team’s exposure to cybersecurity training and events, promoting the use of tools and solutions that provide customers a consistent security experience, building in-house expertise and promoting a company-wide community of practice for product security are what he is passionate about pursuing.
He 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 is comprised of government and private industry leaders who are innovators in technology and pioneers in health care. As a continuation of the task force, established under U.S. Presidential Policy Directive 21, he served as a Chair for the Healthcare Sector Coordinating Council (HSCC) Med Tech Cybersecurity Risk Management Task Group, AdvaMed Cybersecurity Working Group and the MDIC Cybersecurity Working Group with a focus on establishing cybersecurity frameworks, maturity model, and joint plan for improving cybersecurity for medical technology. In the spirit of transparency and collaboration, Mr. Suárez has worked closely with the FDA and Department of Homeland Security on sharing cybersecurity best practices, in addition to coordinated vulnerability disclosure. He is a Certified HealthCare Information Security and Privacy Professional (HCISPP) and has degrees in Computer Science from Montclair State University.