Allan Friedman

Allan Friedman is the Director of Cybersecurity Initiatives at National Telecommunications and Information Administration in the US Department of Commerce.

Prior to joining the Federal government, Friedman was a noted cybersecurity and technology policy researcher. Wearing the hats of both a technologist and a policy scholar, his work spans computer science, public policy, and the social sciences, and has addressed a wide range of policy issues, from privacy to telecommunications. Friedman has over a decade of experience in cybersecurity research, with a particular focus on economic, market, and trade issues. He is the co-author of the 2014 book "Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know."

His work has taken him between the technical and policy research world. From 2014 to 2015, he was a Research Scientist at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at George Washington University based in the Cyber Security Policy Research Institute. Before that, Friedman was a Fellow at the Brookings Institution and the research director for the Center for Technology Innovation.

Prior to moving to Washington, D.C., he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Harvard University Computer Science department, where he worked on cybersecurity policy, privacy-enhancing technologies and the economics of information security. Friedman was also a Fellow at the Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, where he worked on the Minerva Project for Cyber International Relations. He has also received fellowships from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and the Harvard Program on Networked Governance.

He has a degree in Computer Science from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard University.