Cyrus J. Walker III is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Data Defenders, a civic cybersecurity firm serving municipalities, counties, nonprofits, and healthcare organizations. He brings thirty years of practitioner experience across cybersecurity operations, network architecture, digital forensics, and critical infrastructure protection.

Cyrus serves on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's CISA Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council (CIPAC) as a member of the Election Infrastructure Subsector Coordinating Council, working directly with federal partners on threat intelligence and joint incident response capabilities for election infrastructure. He is an internationally recognized expert in electronic voting system security and holds a certificate from MIT's Smart City Design program.

Earlier in his career, Cyrus served as a Subject Matter Expert in Cyber Terrorism Defense and Incident Management at the University of Arkansas's Cyber Defense Analysis Center under DHS funding, where he trained more than 5,000 federal, state, and local law enforcement professionals, including personnel from the NSA, FBI, U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, and U.S. Secret Service.

Under his leadership, Data Defenders serves as the operational architect of Aurora, Illinois's regional cybersecurity operation, which has detected and mitigated 35,331 threats, eliminated 351 high-severity threats, declared zero major security incidents, and delivered those results at 77% below the cost of an equivalent in-house Security Operations Center.