Michael Barrett is the chief information security officer for PayPal. In this role, he is responsible for ensuring the security of PayPal’s 87 million active accounts worldwide.  He oversees the information systems and services that protect the integrity and confidentiality of PayPal customer and employee information.

Before joining PayPal, Barrett was vice president of security and utility strategy at American Express, where he helped define the company’s information-security program and directed its Internet technology strategy.

Previously, Barrett was president of the Liberty Alliance, an open-standards consortium focused on identity management standards and guidelines. Barrett was the driving force behind the introduction and standardization of the Alliance’s federated identity concepts, and he also co-chaired its Identity Theft Prevention Working Group.

Barrett was twice named one of the 50 most powerful people in networking by Network World magazine and was recently listed as one of ITSecurity.com’s 59 top influencers in the security industry. He is a certified information systems security professional (CISSP) and a certified information security manager (CISM). He graduated from Brighton University (U.K.), where he earned a bachelor of science degree in computer science.