Drew McCombs

Drew McCombs is the Chief Technology Officer and Chief Information Security Officer of Cylerity, appointed in June 2026. He is based in Madison, Wisconsin, and leads Cylerity's technology strategy, platform architecture, information security, and product innovation.

Career path

McCombs spent nearly two decades at Epic, one of the most influential healthcare technology companies, holding senior leadership roles across cloud platforms, analytics, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, privacy, and enterprise software development. Earlier in his career there he worked as a software developer, including on a project with University of Minnesota researchers to build the platform infrastructure that let an AI imaging algorithm feed results into medical record software. He later led development of clinical and electronic medical record applications used across complex care environments. In his last role at Epic, he led the Nebula Cloud Platform, Cogito Analytics, and AI initiatives, supporting technologies relied upon by thousands of healthcare organizations. He also served as Chief Information Security Officer for Epic Nexus. In June 2026, Cylerity announced that McCombs had joined as CTO and CISO, a move the company said strengthened its leadership team as it scales financial infrastructure for healthcare.

Remit at Cylerity

At Cylerity, McCombs's focus includes expanding the scalability and resilience of the company's core platform while accelerating advanced analytics, intelligent automation, and AI-enabled capabilities for healthcare organizations. His background sits at the intersection of healthcare technology, cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and regulatory compliance, and he specializes in systems designed to operate under demanding security, reliability, and scalability requirements. On joining, McCombs said, "The most meaningful opportunities often emerge where large industries have accepted unnecessary constraints as normal," pointing to the financial friction healthcare organizations face despite generating large volumes of operational and reimbursement data.

Public commentary

In an October 2026 interview with Help Net Security, McCombs discussed how he balances holding both the CTO and CISO titles at Cylerity, explaining that security work is scheduled into every sprint and that issues touching patient data or funds disbursement take priority. He also described how Cylerity keeps protected health information separate from its banking partner, why the company's AI models are built to recommend rather than act, and why enabling multifactor authentication on email is a low-cost step for small medical practices. The interview also set out three questions he believes a hospital CISO should ask a fintech vendor.