PNNL

Jerry Cochran serves as Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s deputy chief information officer and director of the Cybersecurity & DigitalOps Division in the Computing and Information Technology Directorate. In this role, Cochran oversees cybersecurity and the office of the chief information security officer, as well as enterprise IT engineering and operations. He also leads PNNL's five-year Resilience Through Data-Driven, Intelligently Designed Control (RD2C) Initiative, a cybersecurity laboratory directed research and development initiative stewarded by the National Security Directorate. 

Cochran's management, technical, strategy, and operational experiences span both government and private sector over his 30+ year technology and 25+ year cybersecurity career, working in startups and for industry leaders like Compaq/HP, Microsoft, and the U.S. Department of Defense. His multidisciplinary expertise and background in network and systems engineering, software engineering, security architecture, compliance, strategy, security operations, and military cyber operations are directly relevant and impactful to PNNL’s cyber research, operations, and mission focus areas.

Prior to joining PNNL in 2017 as the chief information security officer, Cochran was with Microsoft in the Cloud & Enterprise Azure Security Division as well as prior roles leading Office 365 cloud security operations. He served as a cybersecurity architect, helping to build a cybersecurity practice in Microsoft Services and was with the Trustworthy Computing Group, where he directed the Global Security Strategy Team. Cochran also served as the Microsoft board member and officer with the Information Technology-Information Sharing and Analysis Center (IT-ISAC) and was a founding member and executive committee member of the IT Sector Coordinating Council (IT-SCC). 

Culminating a 27-year United States Air Force (USAF) career in 2011, Cochran retired as a Chief Master Sergeant (E9), senior enlisted manager of the 262nd NWS where he also served as a network warfare technical lead, conducting cyber operations around the world. Deployed to locations worldwide throughout his service career, he was initially a radar systems technician, until cross training in the 1990s to become an early thought leader in military network warfare doctrine and mission capabilities. He was part of an eight-member team that established the first network warfare squadron in the USAF, where he led the development of key mission capabilities in network security assessments/red teaming and industrial control systems security. 

Cochran has also authored various technical works, including over 200 electronic and print articles and two books for publication. He is a US patent holder for invention in cybersecurity. He holds a BS in engineering and technology management, an AS in electronics technology, and an AS in information systems technology. Cochran also currently holds the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) certifications.