Quiessence Phillips

With over 18 years of progressive experience defending critical environments and reducing risk across global enterprises and public sector organizations, she excels in developing comprehensive security strategies that build resilient organizations through both cloud and on-premises architectures.

Quiessence combines deep technical expertise with strategic business acumen, bringing unique cross-domain experience in security operations, incident response, threat intelligence, cloud security, risk management and cyber resilience. This comprehensive approach enables her to protect critical operations while advancing organizational objectives and supporting sustainable business growth.

Quiessence has successfully built and led multiple security programs across public and private sectors. Prior to joining Kroll, she directed Global Cyber Operations at Arete, encompassing Digital Forensics and Incident Response, Managed Security Services, Data Breach Analysis and Engineering to help clients effectively manage and respond to cyber risks. Quiessence has held critical leadership positions driving large scale security strategies and deployments across industry-leading organizations including Amazon, City of New York, Barclays Bank and the Federal Reserve.

As Deputy CISO for the City of New York and founding member of NYC Cyber Command, Quiessence developed and implemented the nation’s first comprehensive municipal threat management program, establishing new standards for urban cybersecurity operations.

Quiessence architected and deployed Amazon’s centralized threat intelligence program, providing unified security coverage across diverse business units including AWS, GME, and Stores.

At Barclays, she spearheaded critical incident response operations for Americas while successfully integrating Barclaycard’s security infrastructure into the global cyber operations organization. She also served on the Federal Reserve’s National Incident Response Team, providing specialized cybersecurity expertise to the Federal Reserve System and U.S. Treasury, contributing to the protection of critical national financial infrastructure.

Quiessence’s work has been recognized with a number of awards, including the Cybersecurity Ventures Top Women in Cybersecurity award, the FireEye Security Team of the Year for Public Sector award, and the City Tech Foundation Best of New York award. She has been featured in the following industry articles: Women Know Cyber: 100 Fascinating Females Fighting Cybercrime, Tribe of Hackers: Blue Team Edition and 97 Things Every Information Security Professional Should Know.

Quiessence holds the following multiple Global Information Assurance Certifications (GIAC), including GSEC, GCIH, GREM, GCFA, GLEG.

Alongside her role at Kroll, she serves as Adjunct Professor at NYU Tandon School of Engineering.