Nicole Ford, who has more than 20 years of IT strategic experience in both the corporate sector and federal government, has been named chief information security officer at Nordstrom Inc.
Ford most recently served as vice president, global information security and chief information security officer at Rockwell Automation. In her new role at Nordstrom she will be supporting the retailer’s security and governance, risk and compliance teams. Outside of work, she serves on several cybersecurity and technology advisory boards, including the Cybersecurity Collective, Evanta CISO Governing Body, and the Lola Mercedes Parker Foundation.
At Nordstrom, Ford succeeds Irwan Tjan who became chief information security officer at Gen Digital Inc.
“Our technology team plays a critical role in providing better service and being a trusted retailer to our customers,” a Nordstrom spokeswoman indicated in an email to WWD. “Nicole has successfully guided complex organizations through security transformation journeys, creating best-in-class cybersecurity programs, and leading high-performing teams. Nicole has been honored with the Top 100 CISO Award twice and received CSO50 recognition. She added that the technology team at Nordstrom has been growing.”
With advancing technologies, such as AI, retailers are bracing for what could be increasing threats to their cyber security, including phishing, ransomware and malicious emails and false identities that are more difficult to detect. The threat of breaches also increases as more and more consumers take to the internet to scour for the biggest markdowns and deals. There have been concerns that retailers have not invested enough in cyber security. Companies in general need to teach employees to use strong passwords and how to detect malicious links.
Many retailers in the past several years have been victims of cyberattacks, including Nordstrom. A few years ago Nordstrom informed employees of a security breach that exposed their Social Security numbers, checking accounts and other personal information. When the Neiman Marcus Group a few years ago also got hacked, the company sent out an announcement that certain personal information from the accounts of millions of customers shopping Neiman Marcus online was accessed. Target had a huge data breach in 2013, when data from an estimated 40 million credit card and debit card accounts was compromised.
