“Technology continues to propel entire industries through digital transformations, escalating digital risk, and changing the paradigm around vulnerabilities in our business. We stand at an inflection point in our digital evolution, where malicious or manipulative activity is spread in an instant. Cybersecurity is crucial to enable our hyperconnected world and propel human progress.”

Shawn Edwards serves as the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) of Western Union. As CISO, he holds key operational responsibility for cybersecurity incident response management, managing digital risk and partnering with business leaders across Western Union to achieve their goals while balancing security and resiliency. His primary vision, ensuring security and resiliency as a competitive differentiator, is achieved by enabling business opportunities and innovation while protecting customers and company. Shawn and his team are on the front-line of defense which protects Western Union’s cross border, cross currency money movement business.

Before joining Western Union, Shawn had served as CSO of Dell RSA and prior as Vice President and Head of Cyber Defense at Visa. He was instrumental in the transformation of both Dell & Visa's Global Cyber Security program into industry leaders. He did this through key innovations in smart-risk management, attack surface reduction, intelligence-driven cyber response, threat intelligence and counter threat. Furthermore, he also provided thought leadership in designing the overall physical, supply-chain, resiliency, risk, and cyber programs. At Visa, he owned global operational responsibility for defending the enterprise, which processed 65 billion transactions amounting to a total volume of $7.3 trillion annually. One of his passions is being a cybersecurity knowledge advocate as a public speaker much of which he did while at Dell & Visa on cybersecurity in areas such as driving business value, smart-risk management, strategic cyber maturation and managing digital risk.

Shawn holds a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology, as well as several industry certifications. He also completed Cybersecurity programs at both Harvard & Carnegie Mellon Universities.