Royal Hansen is the Vice President of Privacy, Safety and Security Engineering at Google, where he leads the central engineering function that builds and scales the foundational technology that keeps billions of people safe online. This team’s capabilities include cybersecurity threat detection, analysis and counterabuse, building advanced AI/ML security technologies, and protecting privacy, identity and data. From detecting sophisticated threats to building on our AI expertise, the team pushes the boundaries of security innovation to drive impact across Google, so that users, governments, and society can benefit.
Prior to Google, Royal worked in the financial services industry, with leadership positions at American Express, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Fidelity Investments. In these roles, he focused on protecting the security and integrity of the companies’ technology systems and the information they processed, managed regulatory risk and compliance standards, and enabled technical resilience through his teams’ work on disaster recovery and business continuity.
Royal began his career at cybersecurity startup @stake, acquired by Symantec. He holds a BA in Computer Science from Yale University, and was awarded a Fulbright fellowship in information sciences and Arabic language study, which he completed at the United Arab Emirates University.