Max Morris

Max M. Morris is the Senior Director of Cyber Defense and Response for Ally Bank. In his role, Max leads a group of cyber security professionals who run the company’s Security Operations Center, handle Cyber Security Incident Response, provide Threat Intelligence and Data Loss Prevention services as well as help drive Security Assessment efforts around Vulnerability Management, Application Security and Secure Software Development. His Teams also have the responsibility for Insider Threat, Cyber Tabletops and Exercises, Threat Hunting, Compromise Assessment and Penetration Testing.

Prior to coming to Ally, Max was a Senior Vice President and the Manager of Cyber Security Oversight and Threat Intelligence at Regions Bank for 5 years. There he developed the company’s first Threat Intelligence Team to more proactively identify risks and threats that could impact the company as well as led efforts to design a Cyber Security
strategy to help improve the bank’s overall security posture and risk reduction direction. His Team was also tasked with the ownership of operationalizing and maturing formal Programs for Education and Awareness and Incident Management, including the development of an Annual Enterprise Cyber Exercise, running Social Engineering Assessments and creating a company-wide Cyber Security Awareness Week.

Before joining Regions, Max was a Vice-President with Wells Fargo for 26 years, most recently managing the company’s Cyber Threat Intelligence Team. This Team, made up of specialized senior security analysts, was tasked with the responsibility of developing the tools and processes that provided the central, authoritative source for information security monitoring, assessment, communications and subject matter expertise. These services helped protect Wells Fargo’s business units, partners, customers and brand by reducing the exposure to current and emerging computer security risks, increasing the awareness of these threats and helping facilitate the overall remediation efforts necessary to minimize the potential impact to the company.

Max has been heavily involved for over ten years with the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC), the only industry forum for collaboration on critical information and physical security threats facing the financial sector. He served two terms on the Board of Directors, co-Chairs the Threat Intelligence Committee (TIC), sits on the TIC’s Executive Governance Committee and Chairs the sector’s Media Response Team. He also represented the sector in the DHS sponsored Cyber Storm National Exercises, has participated in the Hamilton, CAPS and other industry cyber simulations, was elected to the FS-ISAC Crisis Management Leadership Team, chaired the Annual Member’s Conference for two years and developed and led a recurring Regional Outreach Program.

Max has also been recognized as a Subject Matter Expert in his field. He sat on the Customer Advisory Boards for Symantec, iSight Partners and Shavlik. He has presented on a wide range of topics, including Cyber Armageddon – Preparing For A Worldwide Internet Outage, Building An Effective Enterprise AV Task Force, Effective Threat Intelligence: How To Chart the Landscape and was the Keynote Speaker at Symantec’s ManageFusion User’s Conference. Max has authored case studies, feature articles and editorials for internal and external publications, contributed to multiple BITS papers and a member of the BITS’s Security and Risk Assessment Information Sharing and Internet Fraud Working Groups.

In 2008 and 2009, Max was nominated for the North American Information Security Executive (ISE) of the Year Award. Max was named one of two Finalists for the Award, which honors exemplary achievement and excellence in the management of enterprise-wide Internet and network security, recognizing outstanding leadership and a proven ability to develop innovative security strategies and solutions to meet business challenges in their organizations in the information security field.

Max has been married to his wife Cindy for 34 years and has two children, Heather and Josh. In his spare time, he has played soccer for almost 40 years, enjoys reading, music and digital photography.