Nicolas Chaillan

Nicolas Chaillan is a technology entrepreneur, software developer, cybersecurity expert, and inventor. He was the first U.S. Air Force chief software officer (CSO) and is the founder of Ask Sage, Learn with Nic, and In the Nic of Time. His experience and expertise cover cybersecurity, software development, product innovation, governance, risk management, and compliance with work in cloud computing, development security operations (DevSecOps), big data, multi-touch, mobile technology, Internet of things (IoT), mixed reality, virtual reality (VR), and wearables. Fluent in both French and English, Chaillan was born and raised in France and is now a United States citizen living in the Washington, D.C. - Baltimore area.

Nicolas Chaillan: What the US Must Do to Win China AI Battle Before ‘Point of No Return (Epoch TV 2022)

After leaving the U.S. Air Force in October 2021, Nicolas Chaillan founded and operates three entities. In 2021, he founded In the Nic of Time, an organization that hosts weekly discussions on topics such as software, digital transformation, innovation, and DevSecOps on its YouTube and LinkedIn Live channels. In 2022, he founded Learn with Nic, a subscription-based, self-learning digital platform with a collaboration space in the metaverse. In 2023, he founded Ask Sage which brings generative artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to government teams.

He serves on multiple company advisory boards and is the chairman of AFTER-MOUSE.COM, a company he founded in 2008.

Nicolas Chaillan worked for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as chief architect for Cyber.gov, now the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and special advisor for cybersecurity from October 2016 to January 2018. He was subsequentially selected and served as a civilian as the first U.S. Air Force chief software officer (CSO) from May 2018 to October 2021. As CSO, he worked under Dr. William Roper, the assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology, and logistics. Chaillan was also the co-lead for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Enterprise DevSecOps initiative (DSOP) with the DoD chief information officer.

While working at the U.S. Air Force, Chaillan led the transition to Agile and DevSecOps, including continuous Authority to Operate (c-ATO) processes. Chaillan also evaluated and authorized commercially available off-the-shelf software and cloud-related technologies for the U.S. Air Force.

Chaillan was also the special advisor for cloud security and DevSecOps at the DoD, Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), and Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for acquisition and sustainment OUSD(A&S).

Nicolas Chaillan serves on several advisory boards including Tetrate, Traceable AI, Harness, Aqua Security, Xage Security, Crowdbotics, Scryb Inc., and Exovera. He previously served on the AccuKnox advisory board and on the Forbes Technology Council. He is also a strategic advisor to Raft, VivSoft, and Security Compass and serves on the EC-Council as both a C|ASE (Certified Application Security Engineer) and CEH (Certified Ethical Hacker) board member.

Nicolas Chaillan has founded twelve companies, including his most recent start-ups In the Nic of Time, Learn with Nic, and Ask Sage. In 1999, he founded his first company, WORLDAKT, at the age of fifteen in France. His other companies include GamesAKT, AKT, and SOFTAKT, also founded in France, and Touch Ordering, LLC, Wait List Ordering, Nesting Partners, PublishMenu.com, AFTER-MOUSE.COM, and anyGuest.com founded in the United States.

He has created and sold over 180 innovative software products to forty-five Fortune 500 companies, and he is recognized as a pioneer of the computer language PHP.

Nicolas Chaillan attended Collège des Chartreux from 2000 to 2002 and holds three professional certifications: CISSP – (ISC)2 Certified Information Systems Security Professional, Certificate 550109 (Apr 2016), CEH – EC-Council, Certified Ethical Hacker (Jul 2017) and CompTIA Security+ certification (Sep 2015). He attended St. Charles high school in Marseille, France.

Chaillan was born in Marseille, France, to Sylvie Chaillan and French journalist, Bernard Chaillan. He later became a U.S. citizen.He lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife, Ashton Nicole Chaillan. They had their first child in 2018 and twins in 2020.