Montoya (pictured), who joins Equinix from Digital Realty where recently served as senior vice president and CISO, is now responsible for leading the global interconnection and data centre company's global cybersecurity risk programme.
His responsibilities will include evolving the company's information security programme and defining the company's future cybersecurity roadmap, enterprise risk management and compliance programmes.
"We are extremely pleased to have Michael join our leadership team. Michael is a recognized security leader with deep expertise in information security, risk governance, data privacy and technology deployment,” said Milind Wagle, chief information officer of Equinix.
“We are excited about his vision stemming from his deep expertise in the security field providing both operational leadership and strategic guidance to enterprise organisations. At Equinix, security and data privacy are key embedded tenets of our overall technology service delivery, both for our internal employees as well as our customers. Michael's leadership will further position us for continued success in this domain."
Montoya will work closely with Equinix's product development, operations, IT, compliance and business continuity teams to help ensure the company has “a world-class approach to securing its global assets as well as providing the most secure environment for customers”.
Prior to Digital Realty, Montoya held various leadership roles at Microsoft including chief cybersecurity advisor, where he led security initiatives and operations for the development and delivery of Microsoft cloud security products and services.
Montoya also brings niche cloud security perspective from his role as vice president of cloud services at FireEye, where he led cloud-security operations and designed the company's global data centre infrastructure to improve performance and security.
Commenting on his appointment, Michael Montoya, chief information security officer at Equinix, added: "Equinix is a leader helping the world to connect, protect and power their digital transformation. The complexities surrounding cybersecurity continue to evolve and increase in complexity. I am humbled by the opportunity to join a technology leader and build upon all the great work accomplished to help protect Equinix customers from the rapidly changing challenges in cybersecurity and data privacy."
The news comes after Equinix recently announced that it was moving into the Mexican market after acquiring three data centres from Axtel for $175 million and that it had launched its hyperscale joint venture, in partnership with Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC, which will develop and operate xScale data centres in Europe.
Equinix have made a number of appointments over the past few months, which have included naming Justin Dustzadeh as CTO and promoting Jeremy Deutsch to president of APAC.
