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With over 25 years experience in the operational and strategic domains of cybersecurity across industry and government, Dr. Richard Forno has distinguished himself as a globally astute cyber leader who embraces collaborative and innovative thinking to build relationships, facilitate actionable outcomes, and foster public understanding. His interests and professional expertise focus on information age conflict, incident handling, risk communication, cybersecurity operations, and technology policy, among other areas.
Dr. Forno is a Principal Lecturer in the UMBC Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, where he directs the UMBC Graduate Cybersecurity Program and serves as the Assistant Director of UMBC’s Center for Cybersecurity. He is an Affiliate Scholar at the Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society (CIS) and member of the International Cyber Security Center of Excellence (INCS-CoE) Expert Community. He also advises a venture firm on cybersecurity projects and engages in periodic consulting
Before academia, Richard’s career includes helping build a formal cybersecurity program for the United States House of Representatives and serving as the first Chief Security Officer at Network Solutions (then, the global center of the internet DNS system), and consulting to the government, assorted military/defense entities, and Fortune 100 companies. Between 2005-2012 was a Visiting Scientist at the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University where he served as a course instructor for the CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC). He was co-founder and/or senior executive at various post-Dot Com startups. Throughout his career, Richard demonstrated the ability to work effectively with all levels of technical, operational, and executive management in commercial, government, and military environments.
As one of the original thought leaders on information age conflict and cyberwarfare, Richard continues to speak at government, industry, academic symposia, and to the global media. Along with many articles, commentaries, and papers written over the years, he is the co-author of Cybersecurity for Local Governments (Wiley, 2022) and Incident Response (O’Reilly, 2001). Additionally, he contributed chapters to the books Cyberwar 2.0: Myths, Mysteries and Realities (1998), Inventing Arguments (2005), and The Edinburgh Companion to Political Realism (2018).
He is a frequent contributor to The Conversation and known for public outreach activities that are marked by a commitment to understandability across audiences and experience levels that deliver common sense guidance, actionable analysis, and occasional outside-the-box perspectives.
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