Alissa Abdullah
Information Security Advisor
Alissa “Dr. Jay” Abdullah is Mastercard’s deputy chief security officer. In this role, she leads the Emerging Corporate Security Solutions team and is responsible for protecting Mastercard’s information assets as well as driving the future of security. Dr. Jay joined Mastercard in 2019 after serving as the chief information security officer of Xerox where she established and led a corporate-wide information risk management program. She also served as the deputy chief information officer of the White House where she helped modernize the Executive Office of the President’s IT systems with cloud services and virtualization.
Dr. Jay currently hosts Cybercrime Magazine’s Mastering Cyber and CISO 500 podcasts. She is a member of Smartsheet’s Board of Directors, the Girls in Tech’s Board of Directors, and Security Magazine’s Women in Security Advisory Group. She also serves as chair of BITS, the technology policy division of the Bank Policy Institute (BPI). She holds a Ph.D. in Information Technology Management from Capella University, a master’s degree in Telecommunications and Computer Networks from George Washington University, and a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Savannah State University.