Shaun Khalfan

Shaun Khalfan is the Senior Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer of PayPal, a role he joined in April 2024.

Career path

Khalfan's information security career began inside the U.S. government, where he served as Enterprise Security Operations Manager with the Navy's Military Sealift Command, leading the command's Network Security Operations Center.

He went on to serve as Program Information Security Manager with the Defense Logistics Agency, building a cyber acquisition strategy and security program for a defense acquisition effort.

He subsequently became Director of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure with the Department of the Navy Chief Information Office, leading strategy, governance, policy and oversight of the department's cybersecurity initiatives, and was CISO for the Department of the Navy in 2012 for three years.

From there he became Chief Information Security Officer for U.S. Customs and Border Protection within the Department of Homeland Security, a post he held for two years, leading cybersecurity strategy for the agency.

He then moved into financial services, serving as Vice President and CISO at Freddie Mac for three and a half years, responsible for company-wide cybersecurity risk reduction, security architecture and cloud transition.

He was next Managing Director and CISO at Barclays International for a year, managing cyber risk across a global banking environment.

Khalfan then served as CISO at Discover Financial Services for more than three years, leading information security strategy and objectives for the firm.

He joined PayPal as SVP and CISO in April 2024, bringing more than 20 years of information security and risk management experience across financial institutions and federal agencies.

Remit at PayPal

At PayPal, Khalfan leads global cybersecurity, product security, technology and cyber risk, and resilience strategy, partnering with product and engineering teams on secure innovation.

His team applies risk detection technology, including machine learning models that evaluate over a billion transactions monthly, and he describes himself as a strategic business advisor on major AI business decisions at the company.

He has driven company-wide bot protection initiatives aimed at reducing fraudulent traffic and improving customer engagement.

Discussing how CISOs should operate as AI adoption accelerates, Khalfan said, "The best CISOs know how to balance both, thinking long-term while acting decisively in the short term,"

Teaching and credentials

Khalfan is an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Information Systems & Management and at George Washington University School of Business, where he has developed and taught courses on information security, privacy, analytics and risk.

He is a graduate of the University of Maryland and holds an MBA from George Washington University, and is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional and Certified Ethical Hacker.