Former National Cyber Director Chris Inglis Calls for Coalition Defense Strategy
Organizations must rethink how they defend digital infrastructure by embracing deeper collaboration, greater resilience and artificial intelligence-enabled security operations. Rather than relying on traditional information sharing, defenders must build coalitions that combine expertise, capabilities and shared objectives to keep pace with cyber adversaries, said Chris Inglis, strategic advisor at Halcyon and former National Cyber Director and former deputy director of the U.S. National Security Agency.
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Inglis said ransomware groups have succeeded by collaborating, specializing and adopting new technologies quickly, while defenders often hesitate to move at the same speed. He urges organizations to invest in resilience and robustness along with innovation, arguing that AI should amplify human capabilities rather than replace them.
“I’d like to make it such that they think twice about coming after a well-defended enterprise,” Inglis said. “How do you do that? You do that by increasing the inherent resilience and robustness, you do that by increasing the quality of the defense, you do that by creating a coalition such that whatever’s coming after us has to beat all of us to beat one of us.”
In this video interview with ISMG, Inglis discussed:
- Why resilience and coalition defense should become the foundation of cybersecurity strategy;
- How AI can strengthen cyber defense without replacing human accountability and decision-making;
- What government and industry must do to accelerate collaboration against ransomware and nation-state threats.
Inglis is a strategic advisor at Halcyon, the anti-ransomware company, where he counsels leadership on cybersecurity strategy and public-private collaboration. He served as the first U.S. National Cyber Director from 2021 to 2023 after nearly three decades at the National Security Agency, including eight years as deputy director. A retired Air Force brigadier general, Inglis also sits on the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity Advisory Council and has taught cyber studies at the U.S. Naval Academy.