Benjamin (Ben) Agner

Benjamin (Ben) Agner is an experienced IT and security leader, engineer, consultant, architect, and
public speaker. He has an extensive track record of delivering secure digital transformation and
innovation at scale through cloud enablement, zero trust security architectures, and modern
(Agile/DevSecOps) team structures.
Professionally, Ben serves as Senior Vice President and Head of Cyber Defense Engineering & Innovation
at Truist. Prior to Truist, he was the Global Deputy CISO at Unum, where he led the Security Assurance,
Security Solutions Engineering, Incident Response, and Governance, Risk, and Compliance functions
globally. He is also a co-founder and Independent Director for Rocky Linux and the Rocky Enterprise
Software Foundation (RESF), which builds and maintains one of the fastest-growing and most popular
open-source enterprise Linux operating systems, Rocky Linux.
Prior to Unum, he served as the Director of Global Security Portfolio Management at Aflac, where his
responsibilities included the management and modernization of the Global Security portfolio of services,
the delivery of all M&A security activities, and serving as the security lead for the company’s vertically
integrated portfolio companies in the US. He also served as the head of IT security and compliance at
Empowered, a SaaS-based benefits management startup that was acquired by Aflac, where he was
instrumental in securely scaling the company’s benefits enrollment platform from 50,000 to 15 million
users and $1.5 Billion in annual revenue in under two years. Prior to that, he has more than 10 years of
experience as a cyber security consultant, lead systems engineer, Big 4 compliance auditor and startup
entrepreneur.