Bill Friend
William H. Friend, CISSP. Banking technology executive: twenty years across payments, the ATM, and security.
Bill Friend runs the branch-channel technology organization at Huntington National Bank: the ATM and video-teller fleet, the teller platform, cash forecasting, and the security program under all of it. Before the bank he spent nearly twenty years at Diebold Nixdorf, from field service to a $300M contract renewal. He writes about the ATM at atmavailability.com and advises small regulated firms through SecurePath Digital, the practice he founded.
What he has made
The ATM, taken apart
Who actually builds a cash machine, and where. Two centuries of manufacturing on a globe, a 3D model you can pull into its ten components, five generations on a timeline, and what a validator reads on a banknote that you cannot.
ATM cybersecurity, in practice
How cash machines are actually attacked, from skimmers and ram raids to jackpotting and the switch behind the machine, and a defence you can run: a four-part series for practitioners, a technical-risk white paper, and a risk framework that scores your controls against the threats you face.
SecurePath Digital
Security advisory for small firms in regulated industries: NIST CSF 2.0 assessments with maturity scoring, written information security programs under the FTC Safeguards Rule, and secure-AI adoption guidance. Its practice app is the one he built to earn his own CISSP.
Learning in public
Three YouTube channels of lessons and walkthroughs: ATM Availability explains the self-service industry to the people who run it, InfoSec Navigator teaches security fundamentals, and Bill Friend AI works through running agentic AI in production as he figures it out. Every episode is produced by a self-hosted pipeline he built, from a note in Notion to a published video in a cloned voice.
Where he has been
Runs the bank's branch-channel technology organization through its managers: a 2,000-plus-endpoint ATM and video-teller channel, the teller platform, cash forecasting, fifteen-plus business applications, and the security program over all of it. Led IT integration of a bank acquisition, including 450 ATMs converted from FIS to Fiserv in a single weekend.
Security overhaul: critical vulnerabilities cut 85 percent, $1.2M off annual tooling spend, software delivery from months to 20 days.
ATM fleet availability from 85 to 96.5 percent. $1M out of a $55M operating budget.
Led a horizontal delivery organization of more than 80 people across the US, Canada and India: global ATM operations, 24×7 major-incident response, and software deployment for the largest enterprise clients. Managed-services margin from about 30 to over 55 percent; a $300M five-year hardware renewal.
Fourteen years, ending with a $16M budget and a 30-person technical team.
I ride for my uncle, aunts, cousins, survivors, those in treatment, and the children fighting for their lives. Every dollar funds cancer research at The Ohio State University.
Get in touch
Questions people ask
- Who is William (Bill) Friend?
- William “Bill” Friend, CISSP, is a cybersecurity and payments technology executive in Westerville, Ohio with more than 20 years in banking technology. He leads branch-channel IT service delivery at Huntington National Bank — spanning ATM, ITM (video teller), and teller platforms — and is the founder and principal of SecurePath Digital LLC, an independent security advisory practice.
- What is SecurePath Digital?
- SecurePath Digital LLC is an independent security advisory practice founded by William Friend in Columbus, Ohio. It provides NIST CSF 2.0 security assessments with maturity scoring and remediation roadmaps, written information security programs aligned to the FTC Safeguards Rule, and secure-AI adoption guidance for small firms in regulated industries.
- What is William Friend's experience in ATM and payments security?
- Over 20 years across Diebold Nixdorf and Huntington National Bank, Friend has led global ATM operations, lifted fleet availability from 85% to 96.5%, executed a 450-ATM processor conversion in a single weekend, driven PCI-DSS remediation across a 2,000+ endpoint payment channel, and directed a bank security program aligned to the FFIEC/NIST Cybersecurity Framework. He is the author of a four-part ATM security series and a technical-risk white paper.
- What certifications does William Friend hold?
- William Friend holds the CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) from ISC2 and a Six Sigma Green Belt certificate.
- What does William Friend write and speak about?
- He writes and speaks about ATM and payments security, practical cybersecurity education, and building with AI — including agentic AI in production and AI-driven security testing. He publishes at atmavailability.com and runs three YouTube channels: ATM Availability, InfoSec Navigator, and Bill Friend AI.
© 2026 William Friend