{"id":250742,"date":"2026-05-20T16:32:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T20:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/20\/michigans-security-chief-has-more-to-do-than-cybersecurity\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T16:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T20:50:08","slug":"michigans-security-chief-has-more-to-do-than-cybersecurity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/20\/michigans-security-chief-has-more-to-do-than-cybersecurity\/","title":{"rendered":"Michigan\u2019s Security Chief Has More to Do Than Cybersecurity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.govtech.com\/workforce\/michigans-security-chief-has-more-to-do-than-cybersecurity\">Michigan\u2019s Security Chief Has More to Do Than Cybersecurity<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.govtech.com\/workforce\/michigans-security-chief-has-more-to-do-than-cybersecurity\">https:\/\/www.govtech.com\/workforce\/michigans-security-chief-has-more-to-do-than-cybersecurity<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-05-20 16:32:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.govtech.com\">www.govtech.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>                                    Rex Menold was named to the chief security officer (CSO) position in Michigan in January 2026. The appointment followed nearly three decades of service to the state, during which he held a variety of roles, including in application development, enterprise services and infrastructure. Most recently, he was the state\u2019s chief technology officer before stepping into the CSO role.<\/p>\n<p>There is a lot of common ground among Menold and his counterparts across the country. The vast majority hold the title of chief information security officer (CISO), though a couple have an explicit mention of \u201crisk\u201d in their titles: North Carolina\u2019s CISO equivalent is Chief Risk Officer Torry Crass, while Massachusetts\u2019 Tony O\u2019Neill is both CISO and chief risk officer. Michigan\u2019s approach, however, is seemingly unique.<\/p>\n<p>We met Menold at last month\u2019s National Association of State Chief Information Officers conference, where he talked about his security background and his domain as chief security officer, which extends beyond the realm of cyber to include physical infrastructure.<\/p>\n<p><span data-bsp-pv=\"4f8e492c-6f2f-390e-bc61-f176d3a37ab9\"\/><span data-bsp-pv=\"0000019e-4623-d5ba-af9f-463b7d930000\"\/><br \/><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Get to Know Michigan Chief Security Officer Rex Menold\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dSM5AUtUv80?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Video Transcript:<br \/>I&#8217;ve been in security for maybe 13 or 14 years. I started in with CMS and Medicaid, doing a lot of the compliance and security for Medicaid systems. And I&#8217;ve kind of stayed with it, with identity and things like that. But the quick change of it fits me personally. I&#8217;m better with chaos, like, I\u2019m the guy that you want when everything is falling apart because, I don&#8217;t know, it focuses me or something. But I love how much change there is in cyber. So everyone&#8217;s like \u2018Oh man, we have to worry a lot.\u2019 I was like \u2018Yeah, that&#8217;s what makes it great.\u2019 We get to do all the really, like if something really intense is happening, it&#8217;s probably in cyber and that means we get to do something exciting and we really get to have a huge impact on the whole state.<\/p>\n<p>The&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.govtech.com\/workforce\/michigans-security-chief-has-more-to-do-than-cybersecurity\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michigan\u2019s Security Chief Has More to Do Than Cybersecurity https:\/\/www.govtech.com\/workforce\/michigans-security-chief-has-more-to-do-than-cybersecurity Publish Date: 2026-05-20 16:32:00 Source&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":250743,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/erepublic.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/7a05fd3\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/5290x2572+0+0\/resize\/1440x700!\/quality\/90\/?url=http%3A%2F%2Ferepublic-brightspot.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2F25%2F0c%2F6cb1eb984bc0a59bf1ea5bdee5d2%2F2604-rex-menold-mi-07.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[57],"class_list":["post-250742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250742"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250742"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":250744,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250742\/revisions\/250744"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}