Kevin Charest

Dr. Kevin Charest serves as the divisional senior vice president and chief information security officer and head of IT infrastructure for Health Care Service Corporation. He is responsible for all aspects of IT security and infrastructure operations across HCSC’s five plan states, including actively monitoring and mitigating current cyber-threats and overseeing the governance, risk and compliance program while operating a stable and reliant IT infrastructure on premise and in the Cloud.

Kevin comes to HCSC from UnitedHealth Group, where he served as the VP, IT Security and IT Infrastructure Operations in 54 operating countries. Prior to joining UnitedHealth Group, he served as the Chief Information Security Officer for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and was directly responsible for the HHS cybersecurity technology portfolio.

Before joining the federal government, Dr. Charest served in a number of entrepreneurial and senior executive positions in the private sector. His leadership in technology applications, innovation infrastructure and information security were instrumental to the development of numerous products and services. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for HITRUST and as Chairperson of the Board for the International Information System Security Consortium (ISC2) a 155,000 person cyber professional organization.

Dr. Charest holds a Ph.D. in Cybersecurity from Capella University. He also holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration from the University of West Georgia and a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Central Arkansas. He is also a Veteran of the United States Marine Corps and the U.S. Army.

2020 CSO50 Honoree