Chris Cochran
Chris Cochran is the Field CISO and Vice President of AI Security at the SANS Institute, a Cofounder of Hacker Valley Media, and a Visiting Fellow at the National Security Institute at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School.
He is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and cybersecurity strategist who has led threat intelligence and security operations at the National Security Agency, U.S. Cyber Command, the U.S. House of Representatives, Mandiant, and Netflix, and now works at the intersection of cyber defense, AI safety, and emerging risk.
As Field CISO and VP of AI Security at SANS since November 2025, Chris guides the institute’s strategy for weaving AI into its training, certifications, and community programs, supports CISOs and executive teams on emerging threats and resilient architectures, and bridges AI safety with cybersecurity to expand the bench of practitioners equipped to defend the next generation of systems.
He is the author of the SANS AI Security Maturity Model™ (AI-SMM), a framework that scores AI programs across Protect, Utilize, and Govern dimensions and maps to NIST AI RMF, the EU AI Act, ISO 42001, and OWASP guidance. He also serves as Co-Chair of the SANS Emerging Threats Summit and as an Advisory Board Member for the SANS AI Cybersecurity Summit.
Read CISOs rethink their data protection strategies. Watch How to Strengthen Cyber Resilience in an AI Era with Chris Cochran from SANS Institute and Don’t Trust AI – Verify It: A Practical Discussion About AI in the SOC.
Chris is a contributor to global AI security standards through the OWASP AI Exchange, where he serves on the Author Team and as Agentic AI Taskforce Lead. He is a coauthor of prEN 18282, the harmonized cybersecurity standard for AI systems being developed by CEN-CENELEC to support Article 15 of the EU AI Act. He also contributes to the OWASP AISVS Project, and was a SANS reviewer of the strategy briefing The AI Vulnerability Storm: Building a Mythos-Ready Security Program, released by SANS, the Cloud Security Alliance, [un]prompted, and the OWASP GenAI Security Project.
Between October 2025 and March 2026 he served as a Course Facilitator for the Center for AI Safety’s AI Safety, Ethics, and Society course, and he has been a Distinguished Member of the American Society for AI since November 2025. He publishes the AI Commandant’s Brief, a weekly newsletter at the nexus of AI strategy, governance, and security with more than 6,800 subscribers.
Between 2023 and 2025, Chris was Vice President of AI Solutioning, Communications, and Marketing at AKA Identity, a San Francisco-based startup building a data and intelligence layer for identity and access management, where he developed first-to-market AI copilot prototypes for identity program assessments and positioned the firm as a trusted advisor on AI-enabled identity governance. He had previously joined AKA as a Marketing Advisor in 2023. From January to November 2025, he also served as a Senior Advisor for AI and Security at SANS on a contract basis, before transitioning into his current full-time role.
In 2019, Chris cofounded Hacker Valley Media with Ron Eddings, a cybersecurity creative agency that has produced the Hacker Valley Studio podcast and other shows reaching listeners in more than 150 countries. He served as the company’s CEO until March 2023 and then as Cofounder and Chief Creative Officer until November 2023. In 2022, the studio won a Silver Anthem Award in the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion – Special Projects category for its series We Are Here, which explores the role of people of color and other historically marginalized groups in cybersecurity. Hacker Valley Studio was also named a Webby Award nominee for Best Technology Podcast.
Listen to Resonating Stories: The Power of Creativity and Authenticity in Cybersecurity and Cybersecurity, Creativity, Leadership: a Conversation with Chris Cochran and Ron Eddings.
Chris began his career as a Digital Network Intelligence Analyst with the U.S. Marine Corps between 2006 and 2011, attached to the National Security Agency as the subject matter expert in Digital Networks Intelligence for five Marine Cryptologic support element units. He then served as a Senior Cyber Threat Analyst at Noblis supporting U.S. Cyber Command Computer Network Operations between 2011 and 2015, and as a Physical Pentester and Instructor at The CORE Group between 2013 and 2015.
Between 2015 and 2017, he founded and ran Ashlar Cyber Solutions as Managing Partner, and between 2016 and 2018 he served as Principal Consultant for Security Operations at Mandiant. He then served as Lead Associate for Commercial Cybersecurity at Booz Allen Hamilton in 2018, and as Associate Director of Global Threat Intelligence at United Technologies before joining Netflix in 2019 as Threat Intelligence and Operations Lead.
After Netflix, he led security operations engineering at Marqeta, and then served as Creative Marketing Director at Axonius between 2021 and 2023, and as Advisory CISO and Chief Evangelist at Huntress in 2023.
Watch Rely on your strengths in the areas of the unknown and listen to Practicing Confidence, Mental Agility, and Vulnerability While Building Your Cybersecurity Career.
Chris attended Valdosta State University between 2003 and 2006, and earned a Bachelor’s degree in Humanities with a minor in Cybersecurity from the University of Maryland University College (now University of Maryland Global Campus) in 2017. He earned a Graduate Certificate in Penetration Testing and Ethical Hacking from the SANS Technology Institute in 2018, and completed the Designing and Building AI Products program at MIT xPRO in 2025.
Beyond his SANS role, Chris has held a wide range of advisory and board positions in the cybersecurity, AI, and creative communities. He served as a Visiting Fellow at the National Security Institute at George Mason University between 2021 and 2025, contributing to the institute’s research and policy work on national security and cybersecurity.
He served on the Board of Governors of The Podcast Academy between 2023 and 2025, on the Executive Committee of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences between May 2023 and February 2025, and as a Responsible Technology Award Judge for the Anthem Awards over the same period. He was an Advisor to Hacker Valley Media between 2023 and 2024.
Chris’s published writing includes the articles Ransomware: The Cybercriminal’s Gold Rush and Dangers of Phishing, both for The Federal Bar Association in 2016. He is regularly cited in industry coverage on AI risk, agentic threats, and CISO strategy, and has spoken at the RSA Conference, the Cybersecurity Summit, and many other venues. Chris has earned two Anthem Awards for his work on diversity in cybersecurity. Read his profile on Smashing Security.
Chris is based in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. He volunteered as a Motivational Speaker with the Maryland Scholars Speakers Bureau, run by the Maryland Business Roundtable for Education, between 2016 and 2017, and as a mentor with CyberPatriot, the National Youth Cyber Education Program, between 2016 and 2017.
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