Rocco Grillo, FCRH ’89, is a managing director in the New York office of Alvarez & Marshal, where he leads multidisciplinary teams that provide cybersecurity and incident response services to clients throughout the world.
He previously held a similar global leadership position at Stroz Friedberg, a digital forensics and cybersecurity firm co-founded by Fordham graduate and trustee Edward M. Stroz, GABELLI ’79.
Grillo, who earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology at Fordham College at Rose Hill, has worked closely with both corporate clients and government agencies, including the FBI and Secret Service.
“His 25 years of experience in cybersecurity advisory services, incident response investigations, and other technical advisory services, combined with his well-established understanding of commercial sector challenges and national security objectives, have made him influential to the development of national policy in cybersecurity—including the NIST Cybersecurity Framework,” according to The Consulting Report.
Anthony J. Ferrante, FCRH ’01, GSAS ’04, also has deep experience in both the public and private sectors. A former top cybersecurity official at the White House, he is currently the senior managing director and global head of cybersecurity for FTI Consulting.
Prior to joining FTI, he was the director of cyber incident response at the U.S. National Security Council from 2015 to 2017, and he previously served as chief of staff for the FBI’s Cyber Division.
In 2009, Ferrante, then a special agent in the FBI’s New York office, helped Fordham launch the International Conference on Cyber Security. The conference, typically held every 18 months at Fordham in partnership with the FBI, brings together university researchers, top security and law enforcement officials, and executives from companies including IBM, Microsoft, and Google.
More recently, Ferrante, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science at Fordham, helped establish the master’s degree program in cybersecurity at the University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where has served as an adjunct professor. In 2021, he joined the executive committee of the Fordham President’s Council, a group of successful professionals and philanthropists who are committed to mentoring Fordham’s future leaders.
“We’ve seen countless students graduate from the [master’s degree] program and start successful careers in cybersecurity, helping both to reduce the growing cybersecurity skills gap and better protect organizations from the endless barrage of cyber threats,” he told Consulting magazine in 2019.
Since 2017, Fordham has been recognized by the U.S. National Security Agency and Department of Homeland Security as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Education. The University is home to the Center for Cybersecurity, and its undergraduate and graduate programs emphasize both competency-based learning and applied research.