Rob Knake is a senior adjunct policy advisor at the Institute for Security and Technology (IST) and a principal at Orkestrel, a cybersecurity consultancy.
Rob served as the first Deputy National Cyber Director in the newly created Office of the National Cyber Director at the White House from 2022 to 2023. In that role, he helped to standup the organization and led the development of the National Cybersecurity Strategy. He also led the development of the first ever cybersecurity budget priorities for the Federal government among other initiatives.
In previous government service, Rob served from 2011 to 2015 as Director for Cybersecurity Policy at the National Security Council. In this role, he was responsible for the development of Presidential policy on cybersecurity, and built and managed Federal processes for cyber incident response and vulnerability management.
In the private sector, Rob has advised Fortune 500 companies, startups, and private equity firms on cybersecurity practices, incident response, and strategy as well as mergers and acquisition. In the think tank community, Rob has been a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a Cyber Fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center, a Senior Research Scientist at Northeastern University and has taught at Georgetown University.
He has co-authored two books on cybersecurity with Richard Clarke, Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and The Fifth Domain: Defending Our Country, Our Companies, and Ourselves in the Age of Cyber Threats. He has testified before Congress four times.
He holds a Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and undergraduate degrees in history and government from Connecticut College and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.