David Simon
David Simon
David Simon is a partner in Mayer Brown’s Washington DC office and co-leader of Global Cyber Incident Response. David is a member of the Cybersecurity & Data Privacy practice, as well as a member of the firm’s National Security and Government Contracts practices. A former special counsel at the US Department of Defense (DoD) and chief cyber counsel to the US Cyberspace Solarium Commission, David has deep experience advising victims of ransomware attacks and state-sponsored cyber activity. Named as a Cybersecurity Trailblazer by The National Law Journal, David has also been named to Cybersecurity Docket’s “Incident Response 40,” a collection of 40 of the “best and brightest” incident response attorneys in the country.
During his time at DoD, David advised on the development of a legal and policy framework to address cyber threats, including one of the most destructive cyber attacks against the United States: North Korea’s 2014 cyber attack of Sony Pictures Entertainment. In addition, he advised on broader matters involving cyber policy, plans and operations, as well as autonomous technologies, the use of force, counterterrorism, treaties, sensitive investigations, and regional matters involving China, the Korean Peninsula, Russia, Ukraine, Syria, Iran, and Israel.
David is an Adjunct Fellow in Cybersecurity and International Law at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where he served as a member of a Cyber Policy Task Force that developed cybersecurity recommendations for the 45th presidential administration. David is also a Visiting Research Fellow with the College of Information and Cyberspace at the U.S. National Defense University. Currently, David also serves as an independent expert on cybersecurity, data privacy and international law to the United Nations (UN). Previously, David served, at the invitation of the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence in Tallinn, Estonia, as a peer reviewer of the second edition of the “Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare,” and was a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
A Rhodes Scholar and Truman Scholar, David graduated from Harvard Law School, where he was an executive editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review and a Heyman Fellow. Prior to attending law school, he received an M.Phil. in International Relations from Trinity College, Oxford, where he debated for the Oxford Union and was the managing editor of the Oxford International Review. David graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Minnesota, where he received a BA in Russian Area Studies.
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