AGA PDT 2026

Lance Cleghorn
Senior Director of State Cyber Technology
State of Maryland


Lance Cleghorn is the Senior Director of State Cybersecurity Technology at the Maryland Department of Information Technology. Appointed to this role in October 2025, he drives a transformative, whole-of-state cybersecurity strategy by overseeing state cyber engineering, cyber architecture, and cyber platforms designed to protect Maryland's government operations. His approach focuses on defining what "right" looks like through strategic architecture design, building and implementing to those standards, and operating robust solutions through a continuous feedback loop. Through advanced threat defense operations and the continuous enhancement of cyber risk management capabilities, his work empowers state agencies to navigate a complex threat landscape while supporting local governments in strengthening their cyber resilience. Prior to joining the Maryland State Government, Lance spent ten years with the United States Department of Defense. During the last four years of his DoD career, he served with the Defense Digital Service as the lead cybersecurity engineer, working on major department challenges such as the conflict in Ukraine, the evacuation of Afghanistan, and Operation Warp Speed. He also held notable positions supporting the DoD Hack the Pentagon program, helping bring crowdsourced penetration testing to all corners of the Department of Defense, and leading the web.mil program, which delivered thousands of public-facing .mil websites while overseeing their development, delivery, and cybersecurity.

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