Laks Prabhala

Laks Prabhala is the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). In this role he champions enterprise-wide cybersecurity strategy and cyber defense operations for the department.

Career path

Prabhala has worked in IT, cybersecurity and cloud computing for more than 35 years, across both federal agencies and global financial institutions.

He served a seven-year term as Director and CISO for the Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs (DOJ OJP), consulting to the federal government on one of the largest data collections to date and managing program elements and infrastructure for over 350,000 users across more than 250 regional offices.

For that work he received the Assistant Attorney General Award in 2010 and completed the DOJ Leadership Excellence and Achievement Program as a Graduate/Fellow in 2011. In 2014 he was named to SANS Institute's People Who Made a Difference in Security list for driving OJP's Next Generation Security implementation and its Secure Cloud initiative, having pulled together a cross-department team focused on the Critical Security Controls.

He also held senior leadership positions at Accenture, including as Security Account Lead for CISO & Zero Trust Advisory Services at Accenture Federal, and at the U.S. Census Bureau, where he directed Zero Trust architecture, FedRAMP compliance and large-scale IT modernization initiatives.

On January 10, 2023, Alpha Omega Integration announced that Prabhala had joined the organization as its first Chief Information Security Officer and Vice President for Cybersecurity. Describing that role, he said, "As a CISO for federal agencies and industry, we need to factor mission protection and solutions into every aspect of our work, drive compliance solutions and build the next generations of cybersecurity teams."

He went on to become CISO at the U.S. Department of Transportation, where he continues his focus on cyber defense operations.

Education and workforce development

Prabhala holds a Bachelor of Technology degree from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, a Master of Science in Computer Science from Drexel University, and completed a Senior Executive Fellowship at Harvard University's Kennedy School; he also holds CISSP, CEH and ITIL certifications.

He has supported workforce development through mentorship projects for the next generation of cyber professionals, serving as Chairman of the Advisory Committee for Gifted Education in Loudoun County Public Schools, a Board Member of the Advisory Board for the College of Engineering at Tuskegee University, a Member of the College of Security Studies Advisory Council at Colorado Technical University, and a Board Member on the Cyber Board of Advisors for Liberty University.