Jean Schaffer

In her role as federal CTO, Jean is responsible for articulating the value of Corelight’s data-first approach to cybersecurity at all levels of the government. Prior to Corelight, Jean served as the CISO for the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). She advanced numerous IT security efforts across DIA’s global enterprise and underscored the need for a JWICS Modernization Program, gaining the support of Director of National Intelligence, Under Secretary of Defense Intelligence, and combatant commands. Building on this, she partnered with the other Intelligence community CISO’s in developing the IC Strategic Plan for Improving Cybersecurity (I-Plan). Dual-hatted as the chief of enterprise operations and cybersecurity, she was responsible for managing, operating, and executing funds for DIA’s enterprise IT services and the 24x7 IT and Computer Network Defense Operations Centers. Jean was employed for 30 years at the National Security Agency (NSA). She held numerous Senior Executive Leadership roles in the cybersecurity and signals intelligence mission areas. She led several mitigation efforts for vastly improving NSA’s insider threat detection and deterrence following identified security leaks. She managed the global network infrastructure supporting NSA’s tactical, enterprise, business, and mission systems. She was the Authorizing Official for NSA, balancing the operational and economic costs of IT protective measures against the requirements for mission accomplishment. She was also the director of the National Information Assurance Partnership/Common Criteria Evaluation Validation Schema earlier in her career. In addition to her role at Corelight, she is the President/CEO of Verity Insight, LLC. As a consultant, she brings strategic and technical expertise, an understanding of the IC and DoD, and a wealth of experience to assist the industry and the Government in delivering solutions. Jean recently retired as a C-Suite executive from the Intelligence community after 33+ years of public service. She has a proven track record for developing transformational digital solutions to large organizations’ most critical IT problems, automating, and institutionalizing those solutions. Jean earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the Louisiana State University in Computer Science (1986), a Master of Science degree from the Johns Hopkins Applied Research Laboratory in Computer Science (1991), and a Master of Science degree in Resourcing the National Strategy from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, National Defense University (2005).