With more than 27 years of experience in global enterprise cybersecurity risk management strategy development and program execution, Kenneth J. Peterson is a seasoned advisor and practitioner. He is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Churchill & Harriman (C&H), based in Princeton, NJ. C&H is a strategic consulting company specializing in the development and implementation of cybersecurity risk management strategies spanning global critical infrastructure clientele to startups in financial services, healthcare, several additional industries and government. Mr. Peterson and his team are a trusted resource to boards and C-level executives. His experience includes consulting with private sector, public sector, regulatory agencies, public/private partnerships including ISAC’s, and industry trade groups.

C&H provides executive oversight through the execution of strategic, multi-year enterprise risk management projects, including ransomware response, as well as producing inward and outward-facing security artifacts, including earned public-facing attestations. Their due diligence is meant to protect and grow revenue streams while satisfying internal and external stakeholder requirements. Results C&H produces is recognized by various U.S. government bodies, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Defense, the FFIEC, the SEC, and additional regulators and governing bodies.
Mr. Peterson has served on several advisory boards and committees, including the Advisory Board of The Shared Assessments (SA) Program as an original member and served on the SA Steering Committee, where he was selected as the liaison between the Shared Assessments Advisory Board and Steering Committee, reporting directly to the program’s founder and CEO. C&H’s involvement actively contributed to the development, implementation, and maturation of third-party risk governance and assessment strategies adopted across global industries. Additionally, Mr. Peterson was an original member of the Presidential Leadership Team of the PhRMA-sponsored SAFE-BioPharma Association, which focused on providing global high-assurance identity trust for cyber transactions in the healthcare and biopharmaceutical industries.

Under Mr. Peterson’s leadership, C&H was selected by the Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center (Health ISAC) to develop and execute their original vendor risk assessment utility service for its membership. This is in keeping with C&H’s history of being entrusted with groundbreaking global security initiatives, including collaborating with Lenovo to protect and enable their global client base, advising and assessing Systemically Important Financial Market Utilities (SIFMUs), ensuring their formal alignment and compliance with global best risk assessment frameworks and practices, executing all external pre-certification tasks leading to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York earning ISO 27001 certification — the first ISO 27001 certification earned in North America, and helping to stand up and implement SAFE at global healthcare organizations. Mr. Peterson has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal for his expertise in board-level tabletop exercise planning and execution, highlighting C&H’s expertise in guiding leadership through critical enterprise and cybersecurity preparedness.

As an active leader in the international standards community, Mr. Peterson maintains a strong relationship with The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). C&H earned the formal distinction of being selected the first Associate Consultancy for resilience and business continuity (now ISO 22301) and selected as the first Associate Consultancy for information security (now ISO 27001) by The British Standards Institution (BSI Americas).

C&H’s achievements have been recognized with several awards, including the Worldwide Year 2000 Team Achievement Award from Johnson & Johnson for contributions to their global Y2K program. Mr. Peterson has been honored with The Shared Assessments Program’s Evangelist Award in 2016 for his successful global outreach on third-party risk management best practices. In 2019, C&H was awarded The Shared Assessments Program’s Founders Award for their outstanding third-party risk governance and assessment contributions across industries. In 2021, Mr. Peterson was named an ICON in Business by NJBIZ.

Mr. Peterson is also a keynote speaker and panelist on topics related to Enterprise Risk Governance, Crisis Management, and Third-Party Vendor Risk Management, having spoken at the CMMC Center of Excellence, The Risk Management Association, The Bank Policy Institute, The MITRE Corporation, The Automotive Information Sharing and Analysis Center, The Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center, The American Society for Quality, Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, CVS Health, and The Shared Assessments Program, and several global ISO Registrars.

Mr. Peterson and C&H support several charitable organizations, including the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Plan USA, Special Operations Fund, and UNICEF.

Mr. Peterson resides in Solebury, PA, with his wife, Megan Peterson.