People

Rhea Siers is a veteran of over thirty years in the US Intelligence Community. Starting her career as a Middle East analyst, Rhea served in a variety of operational, legal, and policy positions dealing with some of the most critical issues facing the US Intelligence Community including cyber operations, threat intelligence, counterterrorism and information sharing.

Rhea served as NSA’s Deputy Associate Director for Policy and NSA’s Senior Representative to the FBI, led operational and cyber intelligence production as a senior manager, and served as an attorney in the NSA Office of General Counsel. She served on the Executive Committees of the Joint Terrorism Task Forces in New York, Washington DC and Miami. Rhea was appointed to the Defense Intelligence Senior Executive Service and received numerous awards and commendations for her work from the Director of National Intelligence, the Director of NSA and the Director of the FBI.  She received the Director’s (NSA) Distinguished Service Medal.

Rhea is the co-author of Cyber Warfare: Understanding the Law, Policy, and Technology. She has also written numerous articles and book chapters on cyber warfare and the impact of cyber conflict, crime and escalation in the Middle East. As an attorney and policy expert in the cybersecurity arena, Rhea was selected as a “Cyber Trail Blazer” in November 2014 by the National Law Journal for her work on cyber incident response.

Rhea is a member of the faculties of GWU and the Johns Hopkins University where she developed and teaches courses on Cyber Threats and Strategy, Data Privacy, and Intelligence Operations. She is also a member of the faculty for the Terrorism and Homeland Security program at American University where she teaches Cybersecurity and Counterterrorism Law and Policy. Rhea is also the co-author of The Theory and Practice of Terrorism focusing on different approaches to analyzing and teaching terrorism.

Rhea was the Senior Fellow for Policy and Legal issues at the Institute for Information Infrastructure Protection (I3P) and Scholar In Residence at the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University (GWU). Her work focused on key policy issues such as “Active Defense,” and cyber threat intelligence analysis. She also served as a Cyber Defense Strategy Executive at the Bank of America where she focused on global cybercrime and threat intelligence.

Rhea received her B.A. in Political Science from Barnard College, Columbia University, New York, an MSc in International Relations and Middle East Politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science, a J.D. from the Washington College of Law, American University, and an MIPP in Transnational Security Issues from the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University.