Mark Weatherford

Mark Weatherford is Senior Vice President and Chief Cybersecurity Strategist at vArmour. He has more than 20 years of security operations leadership and executive-level policy experience in some of the largest and most critical public and private sector organizations in the world.  At vArmour, Mark focuses on helping customers understand the rapidly evolving cybersecurity needs of the cloud and 21st century data center technologies.

Prior to joining vArmour, he was a Principal at The Chertoff Group where he worked with businesses and organizations around the world create strategic security programs. In 2011, Mr. Weatherford was appointed by President Obama as the Department of Homeland Security’s first Deputy Under Secretary for Cybersecurity and before DHS, he was the Vice President and Chief Security Officer at the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) where he directed the cybersecurity and critical infrastructure protection program and worked with electric utility companies across North America.  Prior to NERC, Mr. Weatherford was appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to serve as California’s first Chief Information Security Officer and was also the first Chief Information Security Officer for the State of Colorado, where he was appointed by two successive governors. As a former U.S. Navy Cryptologic Officer, Mr. Weatherford led the United States Navy’s Computer Network Defense operations and the Naval Computer Incident Response Team (NAVCIRT).

Mr. Weatherford serves on the Board of Directors of the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at the George Washington University, the Board of Directors at the National Cybersecurity Center, and is a Distinguished Fellow at the Poneman Institute. He is a Senior Advisor to The Chertoff Group and on the Executive Advisory Boards at AlertEnterprise, BitGlass, Chevron, Coalfire, and Cylance. He is also a member of an advisory group on Cyber-Enabled Economic Warfare at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington DC.

He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Arizona, a master’s degree from the Naval Postgraduate School and holds the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) certification. He was awarded SC Magazine’s “CSO of the Year” award in 2010, named one of the “10 Most Influential People in Government Information Security” by GovInfoSecurity in both 2012 and 2013 and was selected for the 2013 CSO Compass Award for leadership achievements in the security community.