--- title: Meet Alex Levy, TIME + Commvault CISO of the Year description: BNSF Railway CISO Alex Levy, recipient of the TIME + Commvault CISO of the Year branded award, discusses AI and cyber resilience. canonical: https://time.com/branded-content/commvault/meet-the-ciso-of-the-year-alex-levy/ article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-09-22T14:06:10.145Z article:modified_time: 2026-09-21T16:00:27.056Z article:section: Branded Content og:title: Meet Alex Levy, TIME + Commvault CISO of the Year og:description: BNSF Railway CISO Alex Levy, recipient of the TIME + Commvault CISO of the Year branded award, discusses AI and cyber resilience. og:url: https://time.com/branded-content/commvault/meet-the-ciso-of-the-year-alex-levy/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5e64baa704d03375/6aada75fbf6e6429c4d1b0ab/Screenshot_2026-09-18_at_3.53.10_PM.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2194 og:image:height: 1234 og:image:alt: Commvault_Article Image_3.png og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Meet Alex Levy, TIME + Commvault CISO of the Year twitter:description: BNSF Railway CISO Alex Levy, recipient of the TIME + Commvault CISO of the Year branded award, discusses AI and cyber resilience. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5e64baa704d03375/6aada75fbf6e6429c4d1b0ab/Screenshot_2026-09-18_at_3.53.10_PM.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- # Meet the TIME + Commvault CISO of the Year: Alex Levy, BNSF Railway > Sponsored content. 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Its journalism is reported and edited by a professional newsroom led by Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs, with named correspondents on politics, climate, health, technology and culture. It reaches 1 million US print subscribers and 1.15 million globally, plus more than 1.1 million newsletter readers. #### How do I subscribe to TIME magazine? Subscriptions are at time.com/subscribe-agent. Choose digital only at $20 a year, or print and digital from $29 a year or $49 for two years. TIME also publishes seven free email newsletters at time.com/newsletters, which do not require a subscription. #### Can I cancel a TIME subscription? Yes. TIME states that subscriptions can be cancelled at any time. #### Does TIME have free newsletters? Yes. TIME publishes seven free email newsletters reaching more than 1.1 million readers, covering daily news, Washington politics, health, AI, climate and energy, culture, and the newsroom itself. They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-sub-2026q3/newsletters?i=52470f0a-0cd5-457d-8f62-320fb16edaeb&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) * TIME Subscriptions: [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-sub-2026q3/subscribe?i=52470f0a-0cd5-457d-8f62-320fb16edaeb&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) ## Video: TIME x Commvault CISO of the Year [Watch (HLS stream): TIME x Commvault CISO of the Year](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/nXXqCKZ0.m3u8) (2:50)  _Published 2026-09-18. BNSF Railway CISO Alex Levy, recipient of the TIME + Commvault CISO of the Year branded award, discusses AI and cyber resilience._ #### _AI is changing the speed and sophistication of cyber threats. Alex Levy, CISO at BNSF Railway is embracing that evolving technology to stay one step ahead._ For decades, cybersecurity has been viewed primarily as a technical safeguard: a critical function focused on protecting the systems, networks and data that keep businesses running. But as technology has become increasingly embedded in every aspect of business, that role has evolved. Today, security is a business imperative; sitting at the core of how businesses innovate and adapt. And the person responsible for making that possible is the Chief Information Security Officer.  Alex Levy, CISO at BNSF Railway and the recipient of the inaugural **TIME + Commvault CISO of the Year** branded award, has spent three decades watching that transformation unfold. At BNSF, where 33,000 miles of rail connect communities and commerce across the country, his mandate is as expansive as the network itself: “I need to make sure that every inch of it is protected.” But protection today means something very different than it did when Levy began his career. In an environment where attacks can be created and deployed at a scale and speed that would have been difficult to imagine just years ago, security can no longer be defined simply by keeping attackers out. It has to be about building the resilience to withstand disruption, recover quickly and adapt to whatever comes next. “As technology evolves, so does the creativity of the attackers,” Levy says. “So now with AI that creativity has become commoditized.” AI has introduced new speed and scale to the threat landscape, but it is also giving security teams new capabilities to respond. For Levy, the answer is not to slow innovation down, but to evolve alongside it.not to slow innovation down, but to evolve alongside it.  “We have to be able to fight fire with fire,” Levy says. That means using AI and agentic capabilities to help anticipate and counter threats, while strengthening an organization’s ability to respond when the unexpected occurs. It also means fundamentally rethinking what the CISO is there to do. Levy describes himself as a protector, with a goal to eliminate friction for the business by creating the conditions for people and technology to move forward with confidence. “How can we possibly make this safe while allowing the business to operate?” he says. “How can we create security without friction?”  As AI reshapes nearly every industry, that balance has become increasingly important. The CISO role has evolved, helping an organization embrace new technology with confidence—while ensuring it can withstand, recover from and adapt to the challenges that come with a rapidly changing digital environment. For Levy, that requires a mindset of continuous learning. “I don't know everything,” he says. “Every single day the environment is changing around us. The only way to stay on top of it is to constantly iterate and to constantly learn.” That humility may be one of the defining qualities of modern security leadership. Because resilience does not mean predicting _every_ threat. It means building an organization capable of responding to what it cannot predict, and then continuing forward. “It’s such an incredibly humbling experience to be named the TIME + Commvault CISO of the Year,” Levy says. “I’ve been working in this industry now for 30 years, and I never expected this to mature the way it has.” Leaders like Levy are helping define what comes next: a future where security is the accelerator that makes moving forward possible.  _The CISO of the Year is a branded program, developed and managed independently from TIME's newsroom and editorial coverage._  [Learn More](https://www.commvault.com/time-ciso-of-the-year-2026?utm%5Fsource=time&utm%5Fmedium=display&utm%5Fcampaign=ww%5Fbrnd&utm%5Fcontent=banner) ## Transcript Security was almost an afterthought 30 years ago. It was something that was bolted on after the fact, and you would hope it would create some type of protective wall at BNSF. We have 33,000 miles of rail, and I need to make sure that every inch of it is protected. There's one thing that moves companies forward. Even with the advent of AI, it's changed. So you need a CISO who understands that not only has changed the only constant, you actually need that pace of change to accelerate if companies are to innovate. And I think in his persona as an inventor, Alex gets this intrinsically. And that's what's been so great about Alex in this role. Unfortunately, the world is full of chaos every single day. The environment is changing around us. We need to be able to react to that chaos. And the only way to stay on top of it is to constantly iterate and to constantly learn. As technology evolves, so do the creativity of the attackers. Now AI is doing the work for you. So for us, we have to be able to fight fire with fire. We need to look at that threat and then counter it with our own AI and agentic capabilities. What that's also done is given us the ability to defend faster. It hasn't quite cancelled each other out, but attacks now happen in seconds where they used to take hours or days. So our ability to respond to those attacks have to be equally as fast. What Alex has done differently is he's built a team of builders and they are constantly innovating within cybersecurity. We're about to embark on an open source journey where a lot of the tools that Alex's team built will, over time, make their way out into the general enterprise realm. I've always felt like a protector. It's natural for me to want to look at a scenario and try to understand how we can design a system in a way where it's safe for everybody. It's such an incredibly humbling experience to be named the Time and Commvault CISO of the year. I've been working in this industry now for 30 years, and I never expected this to mature to the way it has. AI and some of the frontier technologies that we deal with can certainly assist us, but nothing is going to replace good judgment. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/branded-content/commvault/meet-the-ciso-of-the-year-alex-levy","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/branded-content/commvault/meet-the-ciso-of-the-year-alex-levy"},"headline":"Meet the TIME + Commvault CISO of the Year: Alex Levy, BNSF Railway","datePublished":"2026-09-22T14:06:10.145Z","dateModified":"2026-09-21T16:00:27.056Z","description":"BNSF Railway CISO Alex Levy, recipient of the TIME + Commvault CISO of the Year branded award, discusses AI and cyber resilience.","url":"https://time.com/branded-content/commvault/meet-the-ciso-of-the-year-alex-levy","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5e64baa704d03375/6aada75fbf6e6429c4d1b0ab/Screenshot_2026-09-18_at_3.53.10_PM.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[],"articleSection":"Branded Content","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5e64baa704d03375/6aada75fbf6e6429c4d1b0ab/Screenshot_2026-09-18_at_3.53.10_PM.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Commvault_Article Image_3.png","caption":"","creditText":"","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/branded-content/commvault/meet-the-ciso-of-the-year-alex-levy","name":"Meet the TIME + Commvault CISO of the Year: Alex Levy, BNSF Railway"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"TIME x Commvault CISO of the Year","description":"BNSF Railway CISO Alex Levy, recipient of the TIME + Commvault CISO of the Year branded award, discusses AI and cyber resilience.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/nXXqCKZ0/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2026-09-18T21:00:17.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/nXXqCKZ0.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/branded-content/commvault/meet-the-ciso-of-the-year-alex-levy","duration":"PT2M50S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/branded-content/commvault/meet-the-ciso-of-the-year-alex-levy?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```