Armando Seay
Co-Founder and Board of Directors
Maryland Innovation and Security Institute (MISI)
Armando Seay is a Co-founder and Director for the Maryland Innovation and Security Institute (MISI). Armando is also a Director and Technical Program Director for MISI’s DreamPort cyber solutions accelerator. Armando leads the critical infrastructure cybersecurity team, tech outreach and partner engagement support functions for MISI and DreamPort. Armando is responsible for engagement across the nation and the globe to connect with thought leaders and disruptors in cybersecurity. Armando creates partnerships with leading companies and connects with academic partners to help find and validate the true efficacy of solutions for the many MISI customers. Armando also leads the development of conferences and training engagements designed to increase cyber awareness on trending or lesser known cyber challenges but to also increase the pipeline of ideas and skill needed to accelerate the cyber mission of the MISI customer base.
Armando leads the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) compliance and capabilities acceleration project sponsored by the Department of Defense (DoD). The project entails Armando’s leadership of a team and its deep network of technology partners throughout the United States in the testing and evaluation of technology that can be used by the larger segment of the Defense Industrial Base (DIB), which consists of mostly small and medium sized businesses, to get on the path towards compliance with the CMMC.
Over the past year, the team has tested numerous solutions in its labs and in the field to determine cost, ease of implementation and integration, and ability to collect CMMC related data for Information Technology (IT), Internet of Things (IoT) and Operational Technology (OT) used by the DIB in conducting business with the DoD. The team is responsible for the rapid prototyping and development of a cloud-based vendor agnostic platform that is part of the DoD pilot and designed to accelerate the preparedness of pilot participants for compliance with the DoD.
The project supports various Presidential Executive Orders, National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and Defense Federal Acquisition Regulations (DFARS) on critical infrastructure cybersecurity, Industrial base supply chain security and DoD supply chain cyber resiliency. Armando continues to work closely with policy leaders and subject matter experts from DoD and Industry to assist the DIB with cybersecurity resilience and compliance in the most cost effective and less disruptive manner possible. His team provides CMMC awareness training that will act as a precursor to the formal approved training by the new CMMC Accreditation Board. Armando also leads the building of several websites and applications designed to accelerate CMMC compliance preparedness as part of a DoD sponsored pilot program. Armando and his team are considered national thought leaders on how to secure the DIB across multiple attack vectors where expertise is not typically abundant such as in the area of industrial control systems used by DoD manufacturers and critical infrastructure services suppliers.
Armando has over 25 years of executive, management, sales, software engineering, network engineering, cyber analytic solutions development. Prior experiences include Vice President Business Development and Cyber Security for SSI Guardian a leading provider of security training, active shooter and cyber risk assessments and solutions for corporations, government and the education market.
Armando was the Co-founder of Ross Technologies, Inc. which he led for over 16 years prior to its sale and acted as the organization’s chief visionary, customer facing executive and where he led the technical recruiting, major programs office and contracts department. Armando was directly responsible for crafting the sales strategy and post award management numerous multi-million dollar cyber and related projects across the globe for DoD and civilian agencies. Armando led the acquisition of several DoD focused companies, some that were successfully integrated into Ross Technologies, Inc. prior to its acquisition.
Armando is also a Director for Dovestech LLC a cybersecurity and data science company specializing in IoT, cyber and pattern of life data analytics. The company has staff consulting on various cybersecurity efforts for oil and gas and protection of insider theft and IP theft for major companies along with its DoD work in the area of industrial and critical infrastructure cybersecurity.
As a lifelong learner, Armando is committed to mentoring and STEM as an advisor and developer of STEM mentoring programs for various not for profits.
Armando’s graduated from Baltimore’s Carver Vocational Technical High School where in addition to academics he learned to program in different languages and reverse engineer computer hardware. He also attended Harvard University Advanced Learning Cybersecurity Risk Management Program.