Nicolas M. Chaillan

Mr. Nicolas Chaillan, a member of the Senior Executive Service, is appointed as the first Air Force Chief Software Officer (CSO), under Dr. William Roper, the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, Arlington, VA. He is also the Co-lead for the DoD Enterprise DevSecOps Initiative (DSOP) with the Department of Defense Chief Information Officer. As the Air Force’s senior software czar, Mr. Chaillan is responsible for enabling Air Force programs in the transition to Agile and DevSecOps to establish force-wide DevSecOps capabilities and best practices, including continuous Authority to Operate (c-ATO) processes and faster streamlined technology adoption.

The Chief Software Officer works with the Program Executive Officers (PEOs) and is responsible for analyzing current software and cloud migration plans to avoid vendor lock-ins while allowing for rapid prototyping and a streamlined process for deployment. To keep up with the pace of technology, Mr. Chaillan evaluates and authorizes new commercially available off-the-shelf software and cloud-related technologies to help with their adoption across various AF programs based on their mission needs.

Prior to his current position, Mr. Chaillan was the Special Advisor for Cloud Security and DevSecOps at the Department of Defense, OSD, A&S and Special Advisor for Cybersecurity and Chief Architect for Cyber.gov at the Department of Homeland Security. He designed the new robust, innovative and holistic .Gov cybersecurity architecture (Cyber.gov) that mitigates cyber threats by leveraging best practices and implementable solutions with minimal impact to workforce efficiency.

In addition to his public service, Mr. Chaillan is a technology entrepreneur, software developer, cyber expert and inventor. He has over 19 years of domestic and international experience with strong technical and subject matter expertise in cybersecurity, software development, product innovation, governance, risk management and compliance. Specifically, these fields include Cloud computing, Cybersecurity, DevSecOps, Big Data, multi-touch, mobile, IoT, Mixed Reality, VR, and wearables.

Mr. Chaillan is recognized as one of France’s youngest entrepreneurs after founding, WORLDAKT at 15 years of age. Mr. Chaillan founded 12 companies, including AFTER-MOUSE.COM, Cyber Revolution, Prevent Breach, anyGuest.com, and more. Over the last eight years alone, he created and sold over 180 innovative software products to 45 Fortune 500 companies. In addition, Mr. Chaillan is recognized as a pioneer of the computer language PHP.

He is a sought after adviser and speaker, including participation in multiple industry conferences and experience working in close collaboration with many Fortune 100 companies and the U.S. Government.