David Andersson
Information security leader with more than two decades of experience spanning enterprise architecture, compliance, and engineering leadership. Track record of building security programs from the ground up: from ISMS design and ISO 27001 certification to scaling product security teams at high-growth software companies. Equally comfortable shaping strategy at the executive table and diving into technical security reviews.
Security as a service function, not a gatekeeper. The shift from "no, you can't do that" to "yes, let's find a better way to do that" is the work. Best results come from addressing security early in the design phase and treating engineering teams as partners, not subjects of compliance.
Technical Competencies
Application Security
Security architecture, secure SDLC, threat modeling, security requirements engineering, and building security champion networks across development organizations.
Security & Compliance
ISMS implementation and review, ISO 27001/27002, risk management, incident and continuity management, vendor governance, and security legislation.
Engineering Leadership
Coaching and situational leadership, staff and budget responsibility, building and scaling security teams, and driving strategic improvement programs.
Professional Experience
Remote
SaaS observability, open source
Director of Security Engineering
Grafana Labs AB
Team of 10 across two sub-teams. Staff and budget responsibility.
Leading a team of 10 across two sub-teams: one building VulnO11y, an internal observability tool for vulnerability management across the Grafana ecosystem, and one serving as internal security consultants providing architecture reviews, vulnerability remediation support, and hands-on AppSec advisory across engineering teams.
- Built and operate VulnO11y, an observability tool that models the full vulnerability lifecycle as a state machine, from detection through CVE publication, embargo handling, and SLO-driven remediation. Ingests from Trivy, Grype, and OSV across first-party and third-party scope, and tracks the point a vulnerability entered a repository, image, or artefact against the agreed time-to-fix.
- Co-presented at GrafanaCON 2026 on the April 2025 CI/CD incident response. Full attack reconstruction, canary-token detection, and open-source forensics (Loki, Trufflehog, Zizmor, Gato-X) that confirmed no customer or user data was affected.
- Evolving threat modeling practice. STRIDE remains the default, with the team building a custom model inspired by STRIDE and PASTA to cover AI-introduced threat surfaces where classic frameworks fall short.
- Own the AppSec testing toolchain across the organisation: SAST, SCA, external penetration testing, and the bug bounty and VDP programme.
- Internal advisory function providing architecture reviews and remediation support to product teams.
- Staff and budget ownership, operational and strategic improvements across incident management, secure SDLC, and vendor governance.
Remote
SaaS, software asset management
Director of Security Engineering
Snow Software / Flexera
Grew from manager of 1 to leader of 15, including a reporting manager, through the Flexera acquisition.
Owned product security, application security, and cloud infrastructure security for the SaaS platform. The platform was an Azure-native, multi-tenant lift-and-shift of Snow Software's historic on-prem product. Started as a single manager with one report, grew the function, and through the Flexera acquisition scaled to leading a team of 15 including a reporting manager.
- Owned the full AppSec and cloud security toolchain on Azure: SAST, DAST, SCA, and CSPM, plus external penetration testing and the bug bounty programme.
- Platform security owner for ISO 27001 certification and SOC 2 Type 2 accreditation (Security Trust Service Criterion). Sat in audit interviews, collected evidence, and improved policies and SDLC controls across the platform. The wider GRC and CISO function orchestrated the certification programme overall.
- Led security engineering through the Flexera acquisition and team integration.
- Daily operational and strategic risk management across development and production.
- Held monthly CTO updates on security posture and progress.
Karlstad, Sweden
Swedish government agency, defence and protective security
Chief Information Security Officer
Swedish Defence Conscription and Assessment Agency
Functional CISO, working closely with the Säkerhetsskyddsorganisation and the IT team (CIO and IT enterprise architect).
Acted as the functional CISO at the agency. Rebuilt the ISMS largely from scratch, establishing a clear separation between information governed by the Swedish Protective Security Act and standard information, two domains with fundamentally different handling requirements. Worked closely with the protective security organisation and the IT team, including the CIO and the IT enterprise architect, and with development teams to embed security requirements into internal systems. Much of the work supported systems to be accredited according to KSF (Requirements on Security Functions) and uphold communications security.
- Designed and implemented controls for both ISO 27001/27002 and protective security legislation.
- Served as acting unit manager and member of department leadership team.
- Established security requirements processes for in-house software development. Based the ISMS on ISO 27001 and 27002, and authored a requirements catalogue aligned with the information classification levels of systems.
Remote
Independent consulting practice
Senior Consultant, Information Security
Versitile Consulting AB
Independent practice running alongside primary engagements. Startup CISO and security advisor work through to hands-on architecture, compliance, and assessment.
Independent consulting practice delivering information security engagements that range from startup CISO and security advisor work to hands-on architecture, compliance, and security assessment.
- Startup CISO for an AI startup. Took the company through alignment with SOC 2 and ISO 27001, maturing boilerplate ISMS content into tailored, company-specific policies. Built a GRC pipeline on Vanta and GitOps: policies authored as markdown in Git, rendered to PDF, and uploaded to Vanta through a GitHub Actions workflow. Delivered in-house OWASP Top 10 training and acted as IT security architect in feature development.
- Security advisor in the energy sector (ongoing engagement). Procurement support, policy writing and ISMS work, SIEM tuning, and applying GDPR and NIS2 to the operating context.
- Security assessment of a mid-sized SaaS product, including review of source control and the CI/CD environment.
- Senior security advisor for a web-based animal medical records system used by veterinarians to report deviations and violations (for example, sheep diseases) and compile statistics. Supported both data quality and security.
- Online doctor service. Helped form their first ISMS and aligned operational procedures with legislation across multiple jurisdictions: Sweden, Germany, UK, and USA.
Karlstad, Sweden
Cyber security consultancy
Senior Consultant & Business Area Manager
Bitsec AB
P&L responsibility for the IT and information security business area. Procurement, staffing, and delivery.
Led the IT and information security business area covering procurement, consultant assignments, and delivery. Key engagements included security architecture for a mainframe migration at the Swedish Transport Agency, developing Secure Development Lifecycle processes, and creating a cyber security strategy for a multinational corporation.
Karlstad, Sweden
Engineering and technology consultancy
Senior Information Security Consultant
ÅF Technology AB
Technical security consultant, primarily industrial control systems clients.
Technical information security for industrial control systems (ICS) covering security requirement profiling, SIEM implementation, and security reviews. Represented Sweden in SIS TK 318, the standardization committee for the ISO 27000 family.
Oslo, Norway
Cyber security consultancy
Senior Information Security Consultant
Avan AS
Enterprise PKI specialist for large organizations.
Enterprise PKI covering design, implementation, and operations for large organizations. Also performed IT security reviews and assessments.
Karlstad, Sweden
Information security consultancy
Information Security Consultant
Veriscan Security AB
Technical security specialist across enterprises, municipalities, and government agencies.
Technical security specialist across a broad client base including enterprises, municipalities, and government agencies. Led ISO 27001/27002 compliance assessments and served as security advisor for high-security ICS environments.
Certifications
Certified Information Systems Security Professional
ISC²
Since 2011
Certified Information Security Manager
ISACA
2018 - 2026
SABSA Chartered Security Architect, Foundation
SABSA Institute
Since 2021
ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
IT Governance
Since 2021
Education & Courses
B. Sc. Computer Science
Karlstad University
Graduated 2012
Information Security (30 ECTS)
Luleå University of Technology
2017
Understanding Group & Leaders (UGL)
Leadership Course
2020