Richard Ledgett
Former Deputy Director
Halkuyt Cyber
Mr. Ledgett has four decades of intelligence, cyber security and cyber operations experience, including 29 years with the National Security Agency (NSA), the largest intelligence organization in the U.S., where he served as Deputy Director from January 2014 until his retirement in April 2017. As Deputy Director for the NSA, he led a global entity with almost 200 operating locations around the world and acted as the Agency’s chief operating officer, responsible for providing foreign intelligence and protecting our country’s most important national security-related networks and information.
Additionally, Mr. Ledgett led the NSA’s 24/7 Threat Operations Center (NTOC), responsible for identifying and countering cyber threats to our national security systems. Mr. Ledgett was also selected as the Intelligence Community’s first National Intelligence Manager for Cyber, serving as principal advisor to the Director of National Intelligence on all cyber matters. In this capacity, he was responsible for integrating cyber activities across 16 intelligence agencies and numerous international partners, and he developed the first National Intelligence Strategy for cyber.
Previous jobs at NSA included leading global collection and cryptanalytic operations, global language and analytic operations, and all NSA activities in the Pacific area. He was an instructor and course developer at the National Cryptologic School where he taught intelligence analysis, traffic analysis, cryptanalysis, signals analysis, signals theory, and collection management. He was also an adjunct instructor at the National Intelligence University. Mr. Ledgett spent nearly 11 years in the U.S. Army and has completed six field tours between the US Army and the NSA.