Biography:

Elias Salazar is a national security executive and cybersecurity leader with over two decades of experience directing enterprise-level defensive operations, regulatory risk frameworks, and critical information system architectures. In his current role as the Deputy CISO for Sandia National Laboratories, he directs comprehensive cybersecurity operations to protect critical government data and high-consequence information systems. His organizational leadership covers an extensive technical portfolio, including Cyber Threat Intelligence, Incident Response, Cyber Assurance, Vulnerability Management, Red Teaming, Operational Technology (OT) Security, Cyber Supply Chain Risk Management (C-SCRM), and Deployed Cyber Professional Services.

Prior to his appointment as Deputy CISO, Salazar served as the leader of Sandia’s Cyber Assurance organization, where he orchestrated the labs' overarching cybersecurity risk management framework, conducted enterprise-wide risk assessments, evaluated technical controls, and maintained mandatory federal authorization status for all internal information systems. Throughout his career, he has engineered strategic defensive partnerships across the broader national security community to advance critical infrastructure resilience. Salazar is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) who holds a Master of Science from Michigan State University and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of New Mexico.