Advisory Board
Charles Iheagwara, PhD
Global Head, AI Cybersecurity Delivery, AstraZeneca
- Standing
- Advisor
- Capacity
- Advisor on AI security, agentic AI risk, and security by design
- Location
Washington, DC, United States
Dr. Charles Iheagwara is Global Head of AI Cybersecurity Delivery and AI/ML Security Leader at AstraZeneca, where he directs the cybersecurity strategy for the company's artificial intelligence portfolio and leads the worldwide protection of its AI/ML ecosystem, from governance and risk assessment to adversarial testing and secure operations for generative and agentic AI. His work centers on security by design, placing identity and access controls, guardrails, least-privilege tool execution and audit logging at the trust boundaries of AI systems. He is a founding member of the OWASP AI Vulnerability Scoring System (AIVSS) project, which is building a standard way to measure the risk of AI and agentic systems, and a Distinguished Board Reviewer for the Proof-of-Control standard of the Advanced AI Society, hosted at LF Decentralized Trust. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of South Wales and master's degrees in Management and in Systems Engineering from MIT. He was a Principal at Cisco Systems from 2014 to 2020 and a Principal Program Manager at Microsoft from 2020 to 2024, and as Managing Director of Unatek, Inc. he led the company to the Homeland Security Company of the Year Award in 2011. An inventor with a US patent and more than 40 scholarly publications, he testified before the US Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship in 2011 and has spoken at the Council on Foreign Relations, MIT, the ITU and RSAC. His contribution to the Council centers on the security side of trust, so that the systems that sign and verify content are built to withstand attack from the first line of code.
Notable roles and recognition
- Founding member, OWASP AI Vulnerability Scoring System (AIVSS) project
- Distinguished Board Reviewer, Proof-of-Control standard, Advanced AI Society (LF Decentralized Trust)
- Principal, Cisco Systems (2014 to 2020); Principal Program Manager, Microsoft (2020 to 2024)
- Former Managing Director, Unatek, Inc. (Homeland Security Company of the Year, 2011)
- PhD in Computer Science, University of South Wales; MS in Management and MS in Systems Engineering, MIT
- Inventor, US patent for an Information Technology Enterprise Intrusion Prevention Implementation Tool
- Testified before the US Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship (July 25, 2011)
Charles Iheagwara serves on the Advisory Board of the AI Trust Council, the independent multi-stakeholder body that governs the Trust Identity Protocol.