Shannon Lawson

Shannon Lawson is the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) of the City of San Antonio, appointed in November 2025, and also serves as Director of the Alamo Regional Security Operations Center (ARSOC).

Career path

Lawson began his cybersecurity career in federal and military service, working in information assurance roles with the U.S. Navy, the National Security Agency, Science Applications International Corporation and Raytheon before joining the Alaska state government in September 2017.
He served as a Cryptologic Warfare Officer in the U.S. Navy. At SPAWAR, now the Naval Information Warfare Center, his role was to help secure research and development labs and support the security of warfare programs in development. He later served as director of cybersecurity at NAVWAR.
In Alaska he became the state's first chief information security officer, and went on to serve as CISO and chief technology officer, unifying cybersecurity operations across 15 agencies, launching a statewide security operations center and directing regulatory compliance improvements.
Lawson became chief information security officer for the city of Phoenix on April 2, 2019, serving as assistant CIO and CISO and directing IT and security modernization across 35 departments, managing a $20 million security budget and leading compliance efforts aligned with NIST, HIPAA and PCI DSS standards.
Before joining San Antonio, Lawson held dual roles at Redapt Inc. as chief information security officer and virtual CISO, leading cybersecurity practice development and client strategy.

Current remit and partnerships

In San Antonio, Lawson sits on evaluation committees for the city's Information Technology Services Department, including proposal reviews for citywide security services. Describing the appointment, Lawson wrote, "This is a tremendous opportunity and honor to serve the city of San Antonio, recognized as 'Military City USA' and 'Cyber City USA,'" and said he looked forward to working with partners including CPS Energy, San Antonio Water System, the 273rd Cyber Operations Squadron, Texas Cyber Command and the University of Texas San Antonio.

Education and published interviews

Lawson holds a Master of Jurisprudence in cybersecurity law from Texas A&M University School of Law and an MBA from Utica College.
In a 2020 interview with GovTech, Lawson discussed the differences between cybersecurity leadership at federal, state and local levels, noting that autonomy over risk tolerance and follow-on activity varied most sharply between the intelligence community, the military, and government roles in Alaska and Phoenix.