James Howell

Dr. James W. Howell Jr. is a cybersecurity executive, researcher, author, retired federal Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), and U.S. Air Force veteran with more than three decades of experience protecting critical information systems and leading enterprise cybersecurity programs.

His career spans military service, federal leadership, and private industry. He served 22 years in the United States Air Force before continuing in senior federal cybersecurity roles, culminating in service as a federal CISO responsible for enterprise cybersecurity oversight, risk governance, authorization decisions, compliance, and organizational risk management.

Dr. Howell is the founder and CEO of SmartCIO, LLC, where his research examines cybersecurity governance, digital trust, human decision-making, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and emerging technology risk.

He is the author of “The Art of (Cyber) War: Leading Through the Zero Epoch,” “The Zero Epoch Guidebook: Cyber Risk, Quantum Disruption, and the Future of Trust,” and “User Risk: The Missing Variable in the Risk Management Framework.”

Across these works, Dr. Howell examines a common question: how do organizations preserve trust when the assumptions underlying security begin to change?

His Zero Epoch research explores the erosion of long-standing assumptions about security, identity, encryption, and digital trust under technological disruption. His User Risk research examines another frequently overlooked dimension of cybersecurity: the influence of Human Judgment on control effectiveness and risk after systems are authorized.

His work is written for executives, Authorizing Officials, CIOs, CISOs, policymakers, RMF practitioners, and cybersecurity professionals responsible for consequential risk decisions. His research argues that as technology changes, cybersecurity increasingly requires leaders to understand not only whether controls work, but whether the people, decisions, and trust relationships surrounding those controls can withstand what comes next.