Christopher B. Shank

Chris Shank has served in a variety of elected and appointed roles in the Maryland state government for thirty years. As a state legislator from 1998-2014, he represented Washington County in the Maryland House of Delegates and State Senate. In 2014, he joined the Hogan Rutherford Administration serving as a deputy chief of staff, chief legislative officer and senior advisor. As a part of his responsibilities, Shank supervised all aspects of IT policy in the executive branch of the State of Maryland directly overseeing the Department of Information Technology (DOIT). He was the governor’s senior advisor on cybersecurity operations and policy, developed the state’s cyber workforce, provided senior staff oversight in all cybersecurity incidents impacting operations, supervised the state’s response to major 2021 ransomware attack impacting Maryland Department of Health, oversaw recovery and resiliency projects to modernize applications impacted by the cyberattack, supervised an enterprise-wide cybersecurity assessment and remediation process totaling $200 million budget allocation, organized and supervised the governor’s Cybersecurity Summit in July 2021, and acted as the governor’s designee for the National Governors Association Cybersecurity Policy Advisors Network.