As part of its annual industry conference, the CIS Compliance Summit, CIS Certification & Information Security Services GmbH presented the prestigious
“CISO of the Year” award. The event highlighted leading experts who protect Austria’s economy from increasingly sophisticated cyber threats.
The award recognizes outstanding individuals who make a significant contribution to their organizations’ cyber resilience through strategic vision, technical expertise, and strong leadership capabilities. From numerous submissions, an expert jury selected this year’s winners. The jury was chaired by Simon Tjoa, IT security researcher at the University of Applied Sciences St. Pölten (USTP).
Among this year’s award recipients was Florian Polt, Chief Security & Resilience Officer (CSRO) at UNIQA Insurance Group, who received the title “CISO of the Year 2026.” The jury recognized his successful transformation of a fragmented security function into a company-wide, standardized, and measurable management discipline.
Security as a Strategic Management Function
“Under Florian Polt’s leadership, security at UNIQA has evolved from a traditional control and compliance topic into a genuine management function. Particularly remarkable is how this organizational structure proved effective during the Ukraine crisis under real-world extreme conditions, without impacting business operations, customer services, or critical IT systems,” said Simon Tjoa, Chairman of the Jury, commenting on Polt’s achievements.
Making Resilience Systematically Manageable
Kurt Svoboda, Chief Risk & Finance Officer at
UNIQA Insurance Group,
emphasized the significance of Florian Polt’s achievement: “I would like to congratulate Florian and his team on receiving the ‘CISO of the Year 2026’ award. This recognition provides independent validation that our Security & Resilience Blueprint is delivering results. With a group-wide tiering model, standardized reporting and escalation processes, and clearly defined accountability structures, we have established a sustainable alignment between business, IT, and security. Today, resilience and security metrics are an integral part of the dialogue between the Group CFRO (Chief Financial and Risk Officer) and our local country CFROs.”