Issues

Cybersecurity

Amélie Koran is a nonresident senior fellow at the Cyber Statecraft Initiative under the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) and the current director of external technology partnerships for Electronic Arts, Inc. Koran has a wide and varied background of nearly thirty years of professional experience in technology and leadership in the public and private sectors. During her career, she has supported work across various government agencies and programs including the US Department of the Interior, Treasury Department, and the Office of the Inspector General in the Department of Health and Human Services. In the private sector, she has held various roles including those at the Walt Disney Company, Splunk, Constellation Energy (now Exelon), Mandiant, and Xerox.  

She was detailed to the Office of Management and Budget within White House Executive Office in 2014 to support the federal chief information officer in reviewing cybersecurity legislation and was one of the original cofounders of the US Digital Service as part of the Presidential Management Council rotation program. Koran is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University and was also a member of the Software Engineering Institute’s Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) coordination center in support of the Defense Cybercrime Center activities. 

She is an avid volunteer and speaker within the security community, supporting various Security BSides events around the United States and has spoken at DEF CON, ShmooCon, USENIX LISA, InfoSec World. She was profiled on episode ninety-one of the Darknet Diaries podcast. Throughout her career, she has been a staunch advocate for the importance of the privacy, security, and sustainability of modern technology in a socially responsible fashion, including by developing realistic career paths for current and incoming professionals to the field.  

In her life outside technology and security, she’s an avid motorcyclist, musician, skier, swimmer, and bicyclist. She lives with her spouse in a home to two wonderful cats and a rambunctious miniature schnauzer puppy. She writes on various technology and social topics on her personal blog, as well as demystifies public-policy topics and governmental operations on Twitter