Rick Howard is the President of the Cybersecurity Canon Project. Previously, he has been the Chief Security Officer, Chief Analyst, Senior Fellow, and podcast host at The Cyberwire (a cybersecurity podcasting network).

Rick’s prior roles also include CSO for Palo Alto Networks (a security vendor), CISO for TASC (a government contractor), GM for iDefense (a commercial cyber threat intelligence service at Verisign), Global SOC Director for Counterpane (one of the original MSSPs), and Commander for the U.S. Army’s Computer Emergency Response Team where he coordinated network defense, network intelligence and network attack operations for the Army's global network.

He was one of the founding organizers of the Cyber Threat Alliance (an ISAC for security vendors) and he is one of the co-founders of the Cybersecurity Canon Project; a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for cybersecurity books. He has a Master of Computer Science degree from the Naval Postgraduate School and an engineering degree from the US Military Academy where he also taught computer science from 1993 to 1999. He has published one book on cybersecurity and has been the executive editor for two others.