Chad Graham
Senior Manager of Cyber Incident Response Team (Cirt) @Critical Start
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WORK HISTORY
Senior Manager of Cyber Incident Response Team (Cirt) @Critical Start
Dallas-Fort Worth, TX, US
Lead and manage a high-performing Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR) team delivering rapid, high-quality response to enterprise customers across a wide range of cyber incidents.Oversee end-to-end incident response engagements, including ransomware, business email compromise, insider threats, and complex enterprise breaches, ensuring effective containment, eradication, and recovery.Act as a senior escalation point during active incidents, providing strategic guidance to customers, executive leadership, legal counsel, cyber insurance carriers, and external stakeholders.Drive operational excellence by improving response times, increasing team utilization, and enhancing overall service delivery quality and customer satisfaction.Build and evolve scalable DFIR processes, tooling, and workflows, including automation frameworks, forensic pipelines, and case management improvements.Design and implement a subscription-based IR retainer program, introducing a flexible service-credit model that enables cross-functional service delivery and drives recurring revenue growth.Develop and launch proactive security offerings, including tabletop exercises, cyber readiness assessments aligned to NIST CSF 2.0 and CIS Critical Security Controls, and threat hunting engagements.Partner cross-functionally with SOC, Threat Intelligence, Legal, Product, and Sales teams to strengthen incident response integration and expand MDR and professional services opportunities.Support business growth initiatives by contributing to proposals, partner programs, and strategic channel development, including expansion into the cyber insurance ecosystem.Mentor and develop team members through structured training plans, real-world engagement leadership, and continuous skill development in DFIR, threat hunting, and adversary tradecraft.
EDUCATION
Howard Payne University
Computer Science
DeVry University
BS, Computer Information Systems
WGU Texas
Bachelor of Science IT, Security
SKILLS
ABOUT CHAD GRAHAM
I lead the CIRT team at Critical Start, an MDR provider where my team directly manages an 80+ client IR retainer portfolio. Day to day that means running high-severity incident response engagements — BEC, account takeovers, identity-based compromises — and being the person clients, their legal counsel, and their cyber insurance carriers turn to when things go sideways.Before this I spent six years at Protiviti and Alvarez & Marsal doing DFIR work for Fortune 500s, government entities, and organizations dealing with serious breaches. A few of those involved executives at the center of the incident, which is where I learned that the hardest part of this work usually isn\'t technical.I hold CISSP, GCIH, GCFA, and GNFA certifications. Outside of work I run the Fort Worth chapter of 2600 and stay active in the local cybersecurity community through HackFTW.
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