Daniel Sutherland

Senior Advisor

The Chertoff Group

Daniel W. Sutherland is a Senior Advisor to The Chertoff Group. Mr. Sutherland supports our clients through his experiences as a senior cybersecurity official at one of the world’s most influential social media companies and at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

At Meta, Mr. Sutherland led the legal team supporting Meta’s Chief Information Security Officer. In this role, Mr. Sutherland developed a thorough understanding of the global cybersecurity legal and regulatory landscape, and translated that into specific tools, practices and policies that security engineering and product management teams put into place.

He helped develop a mature governance, risk and compliance program; advised company leadership and the Board of Directors on cybersecurity risk management; led tabletop exercises; and conducted internal investigations that helped set the direction for Meta’s security missions.

Previously, Mr. Sutherland helped launch CISA in 2018 and served as the agency’s first Chief Counsel. His office negotiated complex technology agreements; provided daily operational support to the agency’s experts in threat hunting, vulnerability management and election security; advocated the agency’s positions in litigation; drafted and negotiated legislation; and responded to audits and investigations.

Mr. Sutherland engaged in most of the major cyber incidents of the past decade, including the OPM breach, the threats to election infrastructure, the SolarWinds breach, the Microsoft Exchange server attack, and the epidemic of ransomware. He led the response to the risks posed by the Kaspersky Lab and helped create frameworks to analyze nation-state threats to the security of supply chains.

His office drafted and negotiated several major pieces of cybersecurity legislation, including the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015, provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2020, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Act of 2018.

In 2003, Mr. Sutherland was appointed by President Bush to serve as the first Officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the Department of Homeland Security. He advised Secretaries Ridge and Chertoff on a wide range of security issues. These included enhancing transportation security policies; outreach to religious, ethnic and racial minority communities; watch listing; cybersecurity; immigration law and policy; accessibility of information technology; and emergency management.

His speech on the need for the government to engage with American Arab and Muslim communities appeared in the publication Vital Speeches of the Day. Mr. Sutherland later served in the Senior Intelligence Service where he coordinated the government’s efforts to prevent violent extremism; Wired referred to him as “one of the government’s point people on stemming the appeal of al-Qaida.”

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