Chris Painter is a globally recognized leader and expert on cyber policy, Cyber Diplomacy and combatting cybercrime. He has been on the vanguard of US and international cyber issues for over twenty-five years—first as a leading federal prosecutor of some of the most high-profile cybercrime cases in the country, then as a senior official at the Department of Justice, the FBI, the Senior Director for Cyber Policy at the White House National Security Council and finally as the world’s first top cyber diplomat at the State Department.
In his State Department role, Mr. Painter helped create a whole new area of foreign policy focus and there are now cyber diplomats in over thirty countries. He has helped drive, initiated or been involved in virtually every major US cyber policy for over a decade and has created innovative new organizations and approaches to deal with threats and take advantage of opportunities in cyberspace. He was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun in 2018 by the Government of Japan for promoting Japan-US Cyber collaboration, awarded the RSA Conference Award for Public Policy, and was named the Bartels World Affairs Fellow for 2017-18 by Cornell University. Among other things, he currently serves as a Commissioner on the Global Commission for the Stability of Cyberspace, Chair of the Global Forum for Cyber Expertise Working Group on Strategy and Policy, a member of the Board of Directors for the Center for Internet Security and an Associate Fellow at Chatham House.