ABOUT CYBER DEFENSE CENTER
OVER 10 YEARS OF PROTECTION
ASCEND
The CYBER DEFENSE CENTER ASCEND program offers the world's leading and most trusted OT cyber security certifications. Improve critical infrastructure cyber security capabilities through immersive training, cutting edge certifications, scholarships, secure workforce awareness training, deployment assurance, and academic collaboration with universities to innovate cybersecurity education. Through our ASCEND program, you and your company will gain a force advantage in defending critical infrastructure. You will also take a leading role in defending your nation's critical infrastructure while improving OT cyber security for companies within your community.
DEFEND
The CYBER DEFENSE CENTER DEFEND programs provide wartime preparation to critical infrastructure organizations and operational cybersecurity capabilities to rural and municipal utilities and communities. Our DEFEND program harnesses ASCEND students paired with subject matter experts within the cyber security community to provide defense improvement against emerging cyber threats and ongoing technical assistance for what makes, connects, moves, and powers our world. This community and civil defense capability works to force multiply cybersecurity efforts to protect, defend, respond, and recover from cyber threats and attacks.
ORIGIN STORY
The CYBER DEFENSE CENTER (Center) was founded in 2011 in Dallas, Texas, by Erin Patrick Owens to fill a growing national gap in cyber defense readiness and public/private sector coordination. At the time, Mr. Owens served as a ranking member of the North Texas Crime Commission Cyber Committee and as President of North Texas InfraGard, the FBI’s premier cyber outreach partnership. These roles placed him at the center of early national discussions on critical infrastructure protection, intelligence-sharing, and cyber defense strategy.
Throughout the 2000s and early 2010s, Mr. Owens played active roles in shaping multiple regional and national mutual protection initiatives aligned with the National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP) and Presidential Policy Directives 7 and 21. His leadership contributed to the formation or advancement of several key public/private sector partnerships, including:
- Regional Consortium Coordinating Council (RC3)
- RPCFirst
- dfwFIRST
- HoustonFIRST
- Advisory support to multiple Information Sharing and Analysis Centers (ISACs) and Fusion Centers
He also worked directly with Sector Coordinating Councils (SCCs) such as the FSSCC (Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council) and Government Coordinating Councils (GCCs) including the FBIIC (Federal Banking and Insurance Infrastructure Committee).
During the post-Hurricane Katrina recovery period, Mr. Owens helped lead regional efforts to roll out GETS (Government Emergency Telecommunications Service), Wireless Priority Service (WPS), and Telecommunications Service Priority (TSP) for the financial sector across the impacted Gulf Coast region to provide mission-critical government capabilities to the private sector for restoring communications resilience after a national disaster.
These national and regional engagements revealed a persistent, unaddressed gap: while federal and regional initiatives existed, no central coordinating center existed to support private-sector cyber defense preparedness at scale, particularly across critical infrastructure. Recognizing this need, Mr. Owens established the CYBER DEFENSE CENTER, filing it as a Texas nonprofit in 2011 and formally introducing the concept to the RC3 community in 2012.
In 2022, the CYBER DEFENSE CENTER celebrated 10 years of public/private sector collaboration, marking the milestone by opening its research operations to the public. Over the next decade, the Center intends to deliver transformative capabilities, broaden community readiness, and lead the national conversation on wartime and peacetime cyber defense.
Become part of the CYBER DEFENSE CENTER today and help shape the future of national cyber resilience.
LOOKING BACK TO LOOK FORWARD
Over a Decade of Service, Science, and National Impact
In 2012, the CYBER DEFENSE CENTER (CDC) began its community mission: delivering cyber mutual-aid support to local and regional agencies through private-sector partnership. Our first operational program launched in collaboration with the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), enabling students, faculty, and industry professionals to jointly serve the public interest.
Immediately upon opening our doors, the CENTER was called to support what became the largest healthcare fraud case in U.S. history. In the same year, our research team uncovered a significant configuration weakness in a major cyber defense software platform, an early signal of the CENTER’s emerging role in national-level threat discovery and responsible disclosure.
By 2013, the CENTER had multiple active projects, full-time staff, and a growing student research corps. The demand for our services quickly exceeded the capacity of a single organization, prompting the founders to separate operations into two aligned but distinct missions:
- CYBER DEFENSE CENTER – A national research organization
- CYBER DEFENSE LABS – A university-aligned community partner organization
In 2014, the CYBER DEFENSE CENTER relocated its national headquarters to Colorado to expand research capability and increase impact across the western United States.
A Decade of National Contributions
Over the last ten years, the CYBER DEFENSE CENTER has earned national recognition for its work across government, industry, academia, and critical infrastructure. Our contributions include:
- Forming long-term partnerships with universities, counties, enterprises, and national critical infrastructure operators.
- Conducting research that influenced county election processes by identifying and reporting systemic risks.
- Collaborating with analysts on the largest national threat desk in the United States and with researchers maintaining the world’s largest malware database.
- Building advanced threat models for large government agencies.
- Discovering, responsibly disclosing, and influencing remediation of some of the largest cybersecurity vulnerabilities ever reported.
- Developing a holistic, six-perspective cyber security reference architecture to evaluate emerging technologies, programs, and controls.
- Leading drone, robotics, and emerging-technology risk research, including supporting multiple CVE submissions through DEFCON initiatives.
- Assisting companies in responding to major risks and breaches through innovative, community-driven security programs.
A New Era: From Science to Applied Sciences
Today, the CYBER DEFENSE CENTER is evolving again, transforming from pure research into applied cyber defense sciences. We are taking a decade of groundbreaking research and turning it into community programs that will reshape national cyber readiness.
To do this, we launched two transformational community initiatives:
ASCEND | DEFEND
Designed to reconnect with the CENTER’s origin story, these programs reflect the vision we set more than a decade ago: to strengthen our collective defense posture, not simply assist individual companies one at a time.
Cyber defense is no longer a solitary pursuit.
It is a shared obligation.
A shared mission.
A shared fight.
It is time to take a stand and stand together.
It is time for a defense revolution.
Join the CYBER DEFENSE CENTER today.
LEADERSHIP
CHAIR | EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Erin Patrick Owens is the founder and Executive Director for the CYBER DEFENSE CENTER. Mr. Owens modeled the CYBER DEFENSE CENTER based on other public/private sector partnerships that he has founded, led, or participated in. Mr. Owens is a nationally recognized cyber defense leader and strategist with twenty years real world cyber security experience spanning several companies and industries. He has served as the top security leader (CISO) for 12 companies and has successfully delivered nearly 100 security transformation projects including deploying automation systems, operationalizing security initiatives that detect, prevent, and respond to active and potential cyber threats, and responding to major security incidents.
Through the CYBER DEFENSE CENTER and his personal career, he has actively responded to some of the largest breach and fraud cases in recent history and also frequently speaks at national hacking and security conferences on new and innovative ways to defend private sector networks. His security leadership philosophies focus on innovating programs through enablement, empowerment, and value driven programs.
In his tenure with the CYBER DEFENSE CENTER, he has developed many of the battle tested approaches that are now used by the CYBER DEFENSE CENTER services and programs to achieve value in security, balanced security models, reference architectures, and an intelligence driven defense posture.