Meet the TIME + Commvault CISO of the Year: Alex Levy, BNSF Railway - Time Magazine

For decades, cybersecurity has been viewed primarily as a technical safeguard: a critical function focused on protecting the systems, networks and data that keep businesses running. But as technology has become increasingly embedded in every aspect of business, that role has evolved. Today, security is a business imperative; sitting at the core of how businesses innovate and adapt. And the person responsible for making that possible is the Chief Information Security Officer.

Alex Levy, CISO at BNSF Railway and the recipient of the inaugural TIME + Commvault CISO of the Year branded award, has spent three decades watching that transformation unfold. At BNSF, where 33,000 miles of rail connect communities and commerce across the country, his mandate is as expansive as the network itself: “I need to make sure that every inch of it is protected.”

But protection today means something very different than it did when Levy began his career. In an environment where attacks can be created and deployed at a scale and speed that would have been difficult to imagine just years ago, security can no longer be defined simply by keeping attackers out. It has to be about building the resilience to withstand disruption, recover quickly and adapt to whatever comes next.

“As technology evolves, so does the creativity of the attackers,” Levy says. “So now with AI that creativity has become commoditized.” AI has introduced new speed and scale to the threat landscape, but it is also giving security teams new capabilities to respond. For Levy, the answer is not to slow innovation down, but to evolve alongside it.not to slow innovation down, but to evolve alongside it.

“We have to be able to fight fire with fire,” Levy says. That means using AI and agentic capabilities to help anticipate and counter threats, while strengthening an organization’s ability to respond when the unexpected occurs.

It also means fundamentally rethinking what the CISO is there to do. Levy describes himself as a protector, with a goal to eliminate friction for the business by creating the conditions for people and technology to move forward with confidence.

“How can we possibly make this safe while allowing the business to operate?” he says. “How can we create security without friction?”

As AI reshapes nearly every industry, that balance has become increasingly important. The CISO role has evolved, helping an organization embrace new technology with confidence—while ensuring it can withstand, recover from and adapt to the challenges that come with a rapidly changing digital environment.

For Levy, that requires a mindset of continuous learning. “I don't know everything,” he says. “Every single day the environment is changing around us. The only way to stay on top of it is to constantly iterate and to constantly learn.”

That humility may be one of the defining qualities of modern security leadership. Because resilience does not mean predicting every threat. It means building an organization capable of responding to what it cannot predict, and then continuing forward.

“It’s such an incredibly humbling experience to be named the TIME + Commvault CISO of the Year,” Levy says. “I’ve been working in this industry now for 30 years, and I never expected this to mature the way it has.”

Leaders like Levy are helping define what comes next: a future where security is the accelerator that makes moving forward possible.

The CISO of the Year is a branded program, developed and managed independently from TIME's newsroom and editorial coverage.