Bryan Cunningham

As the founding executive director of UCI’s multidisciplinary Cybersecurity Policy & Research Institute, Bryan Cunningham is focused on solution-oriented strategies that address technical, legal and policy challenges to combat cyber threats; protect individual privacy and civil liberties; maintain public safety, economic and national security; and empower Americans to take better control of their digital security. 

Cunningham is a leading international expert on cybersecurity law and policy, a former White House lawyer and adviser and a media commentator on cybersecurity, technology and surveillance issues. He has appeared on ABC, Bloomberg, CBS, CNN, FOX and other networks. 

Cunningham has extensive experience in senior U.S. government intelligence and law enforcement positions. He served as Deputy Legal Adviser to then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. He also served six years in the Clinton administration as a senior CIA officer and federal prosecutor. He drafted significant portions of the Homeland Security Act and related legislation, helping to shepherd them through Congress. He was a principal contributor to the first National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, worked closely with the 9/11 Commission and provided legal advice to the President, National Security Advisor, the National Security Council, and other senior government officials on intelligence, terrorism, cyber security and other related matters.

Cunningham is a founding partner of the Washington, DC-Los Angeles firm Cunningham Levy Muse, and his law practice has included assisting Fortune 500 and multinational companies to comply with complex legal regulations under U.S. federal law, myriad state laws and the numerous privacy and security requirements in the European Union and other overseas jurisdictions. 

He was founding vice-chair of the American Bar Association Cyber Security Privacy Task Force and was awarded the National Intelligence Medal of Achievement for his work on information issues. He has served on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Biodefense Analysis, the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age and the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Cyber Security Task Force. He is also the principal author of legal and ethics chapters in several cybersecurity textbooks.