Team

Jake Braun

Jake Braun is the Executive Director of the Cyber Policy Initiative at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and Co-Founder of Cambridge Global Advisors, a national security consulting firm. He most recently served in The White House as acting Principal Deputy National Cyber Director. Prior to that role, Mr. Braun was appointed by The President as Senior Counselor to the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Braun is the author of Democracy in Danger: How Hackers and Activists Exposed Fatal Flaws in the Election System (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019).

In 2009 Mr. Braun was appointed by President Obama as White House Liaison to the Department of Homeland Security. He was instrumental in the effort to gain passage in the European Parliament of the largest data-sharing agreement in history between the United States and the European Union. In addition, Mr. Braun designed and implemented a program to modernize the DHS cybersecurity workforce and supported efforts to expand US-CERT, the NCCIC, and CDM. Before his tenure as White House Liaison, Mr. Braun served on the Presidential Transition Team for the Obama Administration as Deputy Director for the National Security Agencies Review.

In addition to his role at the University of Chicago, Mr. Braun co-founded the DEF CON Voting Machine Hacking Village. In that capacity he co-authored two award-winning reports on the cyber security of our election infrastructure: the DEF CON 25 and 26 Voting Village Reports. Most recently, he partnered with DEF CON to launch “Franklin,” a program to memorialize the most innovative and impactful findings from DEF CON in the annual “Hackers’ Almanack.” “Franklin” also recruits cyber volunteers to support underresourced critical infrastructure.

Mr. Braun began his career in politics and journalism. He has worked on five presidential campaigns and, separately, as a journalist for newspapers in Illinois and Taiwan. He holds an MA in International Relations from Troy State University, an MA in Education from National-Louis University, Chicago, and a BA in Philosophy from Loyola University of Chicago.

Paul Chang

Paul is Program Director of the Cyber Policy Initiative, a technology and policy-focused research organization housed at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy.

Prior to his role as Program Director, Paul worked as a Senior Strategy Analyst at Accenture, where he supported financial and technological transformations for top firms in healthcare, consumer goods, and manufacturing.

Paul is a graduate of the University of Chicago Class of ‘20, with a B.A. in Political Science and a B.A. in Public Policy (with Honors). Paul also received his M.A. in International Relations as part of the Committee on International Relations, University of Chicago ‘24.

Adam Shostack

Adam is the author of Threat Modeling: Designing for Security and Threats: What Every Engineer Should Learn from Star Wars. He’s a leading expert on threat modeling, a consultant, expert witness, and game designer. He has decades of experience delivering security. His experience ranges across the business world from founding startups to nearly a decade at Microsoft.

His accomplishments include:

• Helped create the CVE. Now an Emeritus member of the Advisory Board.
• Fixed Autorun for hundreds of millions of systems
• Led the design and delivery of the Microsoft SDL Threat Modeling Tool (v3)
• Created the Elevation of Privilege threat modeling game
• Co-authored The New School of Information Security

Beyond consulting and training, Shostack serves as a member of the Blackhat Review Board, an advisor to a variety of companies and academic institutions, and an Affiliate Professor at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington.