Paul Connelly is Vice President of Information Privacy & Security and Chief Information Security Officer for Hospital Corporation of America.  Paul leads the program and teams responsible for all aspects of information protection for HCA’s 165 hospitals, 1000+ outpatient care and physician practice facilities, other business units and facilities, and more-than 200,000 staff members.  

Paul has thirty years of experience in information protection. He started as an information security analyst at the National Security Agency in 1984; spent nine years as the Chief Information Security Officer at the White House Communications Agency; and then spent six years as a partner leading a Washington, DC-based information security consulting practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers. He has been at HCA since 2002.

Highlights of Paul’s career include:

• The first Chief Information Security Officer at the White House, where he served under Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Clinton
• The first civilian to serve as a Presidential Communications Officer, leading teams that provided communications and emergency action support for the President in Washington, DC and during travel throughout the world.
• Winner of the Frank B. Rowlett Trophy - the federal government’s highest award for individual achievement in the Information Security field, 1992
• Inducted into the White House Communications Agency Hall of Fame, 1998
• Winner of the Information Security Executive of the Year Award for North America, 2009
• Winner of the Nashville Technology Council’s Chief Information Security Officer of the Year Award, 2014

Paul has obtained the Certified Information Systems Security Professional and the National Security Agency’s Information Systems Security Professional certifications, and is a Naval War College National Security Studies program graduate. He has Bachelors and Masters Degrees in Resource Economics from the University of Florida.