Mr. Nicolas M. Chaillan was 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 was also the Co-lead for the DoD Enterprise DevSecOps Initiative (DSOP) with the Department of Defense Chief Information Officer. As the Air Force’s former senior software czar, Mr. Chaillan was 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 worked with the Program Executive Officers (PEOs) and was 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 evaluated and authorized 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.

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 23 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.

In 2022, Mr. Chaillan founded Learn with Nic, a self-learning digital platform with a world’s first collaboration space in the metaverse under https://cloudnative.town.

More recently, Mr. Chaillan founded Ask Sage, Inc, bringing Generative AI capabilities (GPT) to government teams (https://www.asksage.ai).

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

Career Chronology

1. October 1999 – December 2002 – WorldAKT, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Marseille, France.
2. December 2000 – December 2002 – GamesAKT, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Marseille, France.
3. December 2000 – Nov 2011 – AKT, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Information Security Officer, Lyon, France.
4. April 2005 – November 2011 – SOFTAKT, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Lyon, France.
5. January 2015 – October 2016 – Wait List Ordering, LLC, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Washington, DC.
6. March 2015 – October 2016 – Nesting Partners, Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Washington, DC.
7. June 2013 – July 2017 – anyGuest.com, Founder and Chief Information Officer, Washington, DC.
8. July 2015 – June 2017 – Cyber Revolution, Inc., Chief Information Security Officer, Washington, DC.
9. January 2014 – January 2018 – Holding AKT, Chairman of the Board, New York, NY.
10. December 2008 – Present – AFTER-MOUSE.COM, Founder and Chief Information Officer, Washington, DC.
11. October 2016 – January 2018 – Department of Homeland Security, Chief Architect and Special Advisor for Cybersecurity (IPA), Washington, DC.
12. March 2018 – May 2018 – Qualys, Inc. (QLYS), Federal Chief Technology Officer, Washington, DC.
13. December 2017 – Present – Prevent Breach, Chief Technology Officer, Washington, DC.
14. August 2018 – Present – Department of Defense, Officer of the Secretary of Defense, Special Advisor for Cloud Security and DevSecOps (IPA), Washington, DC.
15. May 2018 – October 2021 – Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, Chief Software Officer, Washington, DC.
16. October 2021 – Today – Board member and On Air Host of “In the Nic of Time”.

Board Memberships And Associations

Professional Certifications

Apr 2016 – CISSP – (ISC)2 Certified Information Systems Security Professional, Certificate 550109
Jul 2017 – CEH – EC-Council, Certified Ethical Hacker
Sep 2015 – CompTIA Security+ Certification, CompTIA

Languages

English and French (native)