Hemant Baidwan

Hemant Baidwan is the Executive Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) of Knox Systems, appointed in March 2026.

Knox Systems describes itself as the largest federal AI-managed cloud provider.

Career path

Baidwan spent several years at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), where he served as deputy CISO before becoming the department's CISO.

As DHS CISO, he was responsible for overseeing the agency's approach to cybersecurity and for ensuring compliance with federal guidelines.

He also held the post of Acting Deputy Chief Information Officer at DHS, with responsibility for securing one of the largest civilian federal environments.

He has described his two years as DHS CISO as a period in which he led the development of a departmental cybersecurity strategy and helped move the agency further along its zero trust journey.

His DHS work also included launching the Hack DHS vulnerability disclosure program and developing the Unified Cybersecurity Maturity Model to improve enterprise risk visibility. It further covered modernizing risk management through automation and a risk operations model.

He contributed to federal AI cybersecurity policy and cyber supply chain security initiatives, and he received industry and federal awards for leadership and innovation. These included a department Innovation Award.

Beyond DHS, he was an inaugural member of the FedRAMP Board, which the General Services Administration set up to help accelerate government cloud adoption. He also served as Vice Chair of the federal CISO Council.

In March 2026, Knox Systems announced his appointment as Executive CISO.

Remit at Knox Systems

At Knox, Baidwan leads the company's cybersecurity program across its AI-driven cloud platform. His remit includes work on automated compliance and secure federal cloud adoption.

He leads enterprise cybersecurity strategy and the development of AI-driven, cloud-native security platforms.

He is also expected to help customers through the FedRAMP authorization process.

Knox CEO Irina Denisenko said he would be responsible for driving technical excellence at the company and for ensuring customers can deliver secure, FedRAMP-compliant solutions to government.

Views on risk operations and FedRAMP

In an April 2026 interview on Federal News Network's Ask the CIO, Baidwan named a change in mindset as his most significant accomplishment at DHS.

He described it this way: "The biggest one that I’m really proud is helping shift our focus from purely compliance-driven approaches from a cybersecurity standpoint toward really operational risk management,"

He argued that adversaries using AI make it impractical to rely on legacy processes to secure systems and data.

He said compliance remains important, but DHS had to speed up how it identifies and mitigates cyber risk. Under his framing, compliance becomes an outcome of risk reduction rather than the goal itself.

He explained that DHS aimed to learn of vulnerabilities before they became known exploited vulnerabilities, because by that stage it may be too late.

He outlined a flywheel approach in which department-wide visibility into the riskiest issues shows whether a common problem is one of funding, technology, people or process. That analysis then informs CIO Council and CISO Council discussions and budget priorities.

He also pointed to the authority to operate process, where DHS moved from point-in-time assessments toward continuous monitoring for a growing number of systems.

His author page on HealthcareInfoSecurity lists an on-demand session dated May 6, 2026, titled Rev5 vs. 20x: Breaking Down the FedRAMP Changes That Matter.

The session covers FedRAMP 20x's continuous approach to authorization, which centres on automation, real-time risk assessment and ongoing compliance.