Kathryn Knerler

IC Chief Information Security Officer and Director of the Cyber Security Group

Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI)

Ms. Kathryn Knerler is the Intelligence Community Chief Information Security Officer (IC CISO). In this role, she is responsible for leading, ensuring, and facilitating integration of security of intelligence IT systems among the 17 agencies in the Intelligence Community.
Ms. Knerler brings deep cybersecurity experience to the CISO role. She is a co-author of the top downloaded book at MITRE, 11 Strategies of a World-Class Cybersecurity Center. Along with podcasts, interviews, and speaking engagements at international industry security conferences, she brings her
decades of experience to the book and articles, sharing insights from hunting adversaries and leading security operations centers.
Prior to joining the ODNI, Ms. Knerler served in several non-profit leadership positions in cybersecurity at MITRE and as the Program Director of the Department of Energy’s incident and analysis capability at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Through her interest in giving back to the public, she has delivered impactful contributions including successfully orchestrating cybersecurity strategies that realigned budgets and personnel to better address threats and realize efficiencies. Her accomplishments include creating a pipeline by hiring and placing over 160 talented cybersecurity professionals into the non-profit and government support workforce in three years. She designed cybersecurity intelligence sensors for defensive operations to illuminate previously undetected advanced threat activity.
Her leadership and designs are informed by her experience building teams and serving on the front lines of incident detection and response. In addition, Ms. Knerler identified original vulnerabilities and developed and published mitigations for government and public consumers and served as an expert witness in court cases. She began her career in the Department of Energy as a Defense Programs intern, advancing to serve as Authorizing Official for security risk acceptance of national laboratory and defense contractor systems.
Ms. Knerler received her Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University. She holds a Master of Science in Cybersecurity and Master of Business Administration, both from University of Maryland.
Ms. Knerler enjoys research, organizing, true crime, and organizing and resides in the Washington, D.C. area with her family.

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