Jamil Jaffer, '03: A Cybersecurity Career from Government to Business
Security, cyber and otherwise, is in Jamil Jaffer’s wheelhouse. Jaffer, ’03, has held top-level positions related to security matters in the White House, the Department of Justice, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. He holds a master’s degree from the United States Naval War College; he has taught at the National Intelligence University and at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University; and he heads the Homeland and National Security Law Program at George Mason University School of Law, where he is an adjunct faculty member. Last June, Jaffer joined IronNet Cybersecurity as the company’s vice president for strategy and business development.
“My background is of course important for my role at IronNet,” he says, “but I’m not lawyering in this job. I wanted to try something a little different. I’m deeply involved with many strategic decisions, and I spend a lot of time helping clients and engaging with potential clients. Our team includes some of the most experienced and talented cybersecurity experts in the world, and our technology is really game-changing. We provide best-in-class cyber defense using complex behavioral modeling, big-data analytics, and advanced computing capabilities, so threats can be identified and responded to in real time across a company’s entire business network. ‘Exciting’ is probably not a strong enough word to describe how this job feels to me.”
In his years with the government, Jaffer also handled some highly impactful, even dramatic, responsibilities. Less than five years out of the Law School, as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General in the National Security Division at the Department of Justice, he was part of a small team (which included his Law School classmate Jake Phillips) that handled the first two-party litigated matter in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, after Yahoo! refused to comply with the federal government’s request for information about some of its customers. The same team subsequently defeated Yahoo!’s appeal at the FISA Court of Review.
A few short months in the White House as associate counsel to the President, focused on national security issues, were followed by two years as a lawyer at Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel, after which he returned to Capitol Hill as senior counsel to the House Intelligence Committee. There he was, among other things, the lead drafter of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act.
In his next position, at the Senate, where he was Republican Chief Counsel and Senior Advisor to the Committee on Foreign Relations, he led the drafting of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act and two enacted laws imposing sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, as well as legislation authorizing the use of military force against Syria, ISIS, and al-Qaeda.
Since joining IronNet, he has published widely about security issues, including a book chapter coauthored with former CIA director Michael Hayden and two op-eds with former Attorney General Michael Mukasey.
“I can’t even begin to say how much I loved my time at the Law School,” Jaffer says. “There was a constant discussion of legal and policy ideas, essentially tearing ideas and concepts to pieces and putting them back together again . . . There was the exceptional support and mentorship from the faculty—to name just one example, Professor Baird essentially got me my first clerkship by recommending me to an Appeals Court judge [Jaffer served two Court of Appeals clerkships]. And of course there have been the lifelong friendships with so many members of what I consider to have been a uniquely enjoyable class.”
“I count my time at the Law School as one of the best experiences of my life,” he says. “It prepared me for everything I have done afterward, including my current position at IronNet, where every day I use many skills that I learned at the Law School. I hope to be at IronNet for some time to come, and I know my Law School education will help me here and with whatever might come next.”