American · b. 1947
Joel Brenner is an American lawyer and national security official. He served as inspector general of the National Security Agency from 2002 to 2006, then as the national counterintelligence executive in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, where he was the senior US counterintelligence official until 2009. Before government service he practiced law and worked in private industry. After leaving office he became a senior research fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a lecturer on security and intelligence topics. His 2011 book, America the Vulnerable, draws on his experience to describe how foreign governments, criminals and other hostile actors use computer networks to steal secrets and money and to prepare for conflict. He argues that businesses and the government have been slow to protect the systems they depend on. The book brought his warnings about cyber espionage to a general audience and made him a frequent commentator on cybersecurity policy.