Dennis P. Dias
Office of Naval Research Chair, Department of Cyber Science, USNA
dias@usna.edu (443) 418-8220
CURRENT POSITION
Mr. Dias has a broad background of experience from service in the military, federal government, and private industry. He currently serves as the Office of Naval Research Chair of Cyber Science at the US Naval Academy where he teaches the Capstone course for senior cyber operations majors. These courses cover offensive and defensive hacking operations using open source tools. He was selected for elevation to the Senior Executive Service (SES) in 2015.
EDUCATION
Mr. Dias has a BS degree in Engineering from the US Naval Academy and a MS in Computer Systems Management from the University of Maryland University College. He is a 2009 graduate of the Defense Leadership and Management Program and a 2008 graduate of the Army War College. His Strategic Research Project titled “Partnering with Private Networks: Why the DoD Needs a Reserve Cyber Corps” was published in 2008. He has previously been published in the US Naval Institute’s professional journal PROCEEDINGS and recently published an article in Cyber, the Journal of the Military Cyber Professionals Association. He was a qualified Naval Parachutist having graduated from the US Army Airborne School, and also completed SERE and Legal Officer training while on active duty.
PRIOR POSITIONS
Prior to his selection for his current position, he led the NSA Office of Analytics and Tradecraft (A&T) – a large organization that focused on Big Data analysis to support pressing intelligence and cyber security requirements across the globe. Prior to his assignment as Chief of A&T, Mr. Dias was the Deputy Office Chief of the Tailored Access Operations (TAO)/Telecommunications and Networking Technologies Office and a Director of Cybersecurity Operations (DCO) in the National Threat Operations Center, where he led a large team of personnel in all aspects of cyber defense operations in a 24x7 operations center. Before his DCO tour, he served as the Executive Assistant to the Deputy Director for Data Acquisition (DDDA). The DDDA led NSA’s vast Collection and Exploitation Global Enterprise. He was selected for this position while working on the Operations staff. Prior to this role, he led target exploitation for two high priority TAO targets. There he applied dynamic cutting-edge computer network exploitation resources to ensure continued success against key targets and temporarily deployed to Iraq twice in support of these efforts. He was also a Deputy Division Chief in NSA’s Technology Directorate for a 24x7 watch operations center that provided monitoring for a large global information technology enterprise. Mr. Dias began his NSA career in 2004 in the Cryptologic Exploitation Services Group as a team lead working on cryptologic exploitation of signals for national level tasking. Before coming to NSA, he also worked for IBM from 2000-2004.
PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND
Mr. Dias launched his career of service as a Naval Officer, specifically a Naval Flight Officer in the P-3C community in Patrol Squadron NINE where he flew as a P-3C “Orion” Mission Commander/Tactical Coordinator/Navigator-Communicator/Instructor and deployed overseas to the Western Pacific, Arabian Gulf, Indian Ocean, and Africa. He served as assistant operations officer, assistant tactics officer, legal officer, and maintenance branch officer and then served in the Pentagon on the Navy Current Operation Staff (OPNAV N3N5) as a briefer for the Chief of Naval Operation in the Naval Command Center. He also managed/coordinated joint actions related to sensitive reconnaissance operations, counter-drug operations, and other current operations issues. He was awarded several personal and unit awards. Mr. Dias also served in the Naval Reserve as an Information Dominance Warfare Officer, and retiring as CDR/O-5.
PERSONAL
A native of Framingham, Massachusetts, currently living with his family in the Baltimore area - however he remains an avid Boston sports fan.
