Chad Holmes

Chad Holmes is the chief information security officer of the Texas Office of the Attorney General, a role he began in 2026 after more than 25 years in private-sector cybersecurity leadership.
This is Holmes's first position in the public sector.

Career path

Before joining the Texas Office of the Attorney General, Holmes held executive roles at Legal & General, Kivu Consulting, Optiv Security Inc., EY, FireEye, Intel Corp. and McAfee.
At EY, Holmes served as Principal and Chief Technology, Innovation and Strategy Officer for the firm's cybersecurity practice, leading cyber innovation, threat intelligence, strategy and alliances.
He was responsible for the cybersecurity offerings EY developed for its Fortune 500 clients and for a new practice-wide operating model and go-to-market strategy that moved the practice from 99th to fourth place in Cybersecurity Ventures' ranking of the industry's companies. His background spans incident response, cyber recovery, security engineering, AI strategy, board advisory work and cybersecurity transformation. Holmes studied at Harvard Business School and the University of Alabama, and holds a Massachusetts Institute of Technology certification in designing and building AI products and services, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Role at the Texas Office of the Attorney General

At the agency, Holmes leads cybersecurity, AI, cyber resilience, threat intelligence and innovation initiatives.
His work covers AI-enabled cyber operations, breach and extortion response workflows, threat intelligence analysis and cross-functional incident response readiness. The remit continues a focus on incident response, threat intelligence and AI-driven security operations that runs through his private-sector career. Describing the move, Holmes wrote on LinkedIn that "What attracted me to this role was the opportunity to gain a broader perspective on where national security is heading," pointing to the convergence of AI, cyber resilience, threat intelligence and public-private collaboration.

Earlier recognition and teaching

In 2017, while at EY, Holmes was named to the Dallas Business Journal's 40 Under 40 Awards for his leadership in cybersecurity and in the Dallas business community. At the time, he was also an adjunct professor of cyber threat intelligence at the SMU Cox School of Business and served as executive chairman of the Cyber Future Foundation.