Charles Pelton, CISSP

Scope of Leadership: Recruited to design, build, and lead the centralized cybersecurity department from the ground up. Exercised full operational command over the security team, defining the company’s defensive posture and directing the daily activities of engineers, analysts, and incident responders. -Talent Cultivation & Training: Cultivated a high-performance culture by implementing rigorous peer-review processes, cross-training initiatives, and continuous skill-building workshops, transforming a siloed team into a unified, rapid-response defensive unit. -Cross-Functional Collaboration: Championed communication between the security engineering team and C-suite stakeholders, translating complex technical risk into actionable business strategies and earning organizational buy-in for critical security investments. -Defensive Team Operations: Supervised the execution of complex vulnerability management, threat intelligence, and continuous monitoring programs, empowering the front-line team with the tools and autonomy required to neutralize threats swiftly. -Incident Response Command: Served as the calm, decisive leader during high-pressure security incidents, guiding the technical response team step-by-step while maintaining clear lines of communication with legal, executive, and operational leaders.

Scope of Leadership: Recruited to design, build, and lead the centralized cybersecurity department from the ground up. Exercised full operational command over the security team, defining the company’s defensive posture and directing the daily activities of engineers, analysts, and incident responders. -Talent Cultivation & Training: Cultivated a high-performance culture by implementing rigorous peer-review processes, cross-training initiatives, and continuous skill-building workshops, transforming a siloed team into a unified, rapid-response defensive unit. -Cross-Functional Collaboration: Championed communication between the security engineering team and C-suite stakeholders, translating complex technical risk into actionable business strategies and earning organizational buy-in for critical security investments. -Defensive Team Operations: Supervised the execution of complex vulnerability management, threat intelligence, and continuous monitoring programs, empowering the front-line team with the tools and autonomy required to neutralize threats swiftly. -Incident Response Command: Served as the calm, decisive leader during high-pressure security incidents, guiding the technical response team step-by-step while maintaining clear lines of communication with legal, executive, and operational leaders.

Commanded institutional cybersecurity posture and system compliance matrices across high-consequence maritime and airborne electronic warfare simulation enclaves. -Infrastructure Modernization: Orchestrated the wholesale migration of legacy environments into modern, highly secure multi-service baselines, managing technology insertion risks with 0% operational downtime. -Resource Optimization: Controlled resource scheduling, personnel assignments, and asset protection strategies for sensitive hardware and cryptographic/COMSEC accounts, maximizing utilization rates.

Led senior programmatic governance, risk registers, and secure system compliance loops for a Tier-1 global aerospace and defense provider's principal space and classified mission programs. -Zero-Downtime Audit Defenses: Successfully directed major DCSA and DoD cybersecurity audits, leading cross-functional remediation teams to address framework vulnerabilities with zero interruption to multi-million-dollar production lines. -Risk Register Architecture: Built and maintained enterprise-scale Plan of Action and Milestones (POA&Ms), translating thousands of micro-level system logs into comprehensive executive risk briefings that reduced open compliance items by 40%. -Workforce Mentorship: Mentored junior Information System Security Officers (ISSOs) and system administrators, defining standardized technical training pipelines that increased regional team throughput.

Directed the programmatic security governance, risk mitigation strategies, and framework execution for mission-critical defense enclaves and secure technical operations. Served as the principal advisor overseeing institutional system compliance and secure data delivery pipelines. -Macro Risk Management: Engineered and optimized end-to-end Risk Management Framework (RMF) architectures, ensuring 100% compliance across complex infrastructures and accelerating time-to-authorization for vital defense networks. -Operational Leadership: Commanded cross-functional teams of technical and security assets; standardized engineering workflows to eliminate deployment bottlenecks and cut operational risk incidents by 30%. -Strategic Stakeholder Liaison: Acted as the core interface between engineering divisions, corporate leadership, and external federal stakeholders to align security roadmaps with broader operational milestones.

Directed fleet-wide security operations, satellite communication architectures, and critical tactical information systems across diverse, high-consequence global operational commands. -Large-Scale Operations: Directly commanded elite, cross-functional divisions consisting of 40+ specialized military personnel, managing professional development pipelines, training cycles, and strict operational schedules. -Critical Asset Protection: Governed the security architectures of global telecommunication hubs and secure shipboard networks, maintaining a 100% operational readiness rating under extreme, high-stress conditions. -High-Level Briefings: Conducted over 100 formal threat intelligence and technical readiness briefings for flag-level officers and senior international defense attachés

Finished the degree while serving as part of the Forward Deployed Naval Force in Okinawa.