Former FBI Cyber Lead Lisa Yun Joins Archon Institute as Security Director

Lisa Yun, a seven-year veteran of the FBI's Cyber Division who specialized in counterintelligence and corporate espionage investigations, has joined the Archon Institute as Director of Information Security.

The hire is notable for several reasons. Archon, a defense research organization with roughly one hundred employees, is creating a director-level security position that would be unusual for a firm its size. And Yun's background is in offensive counterintelligence — investigating and disrupting foreign espionage operations targeting American companies — rather than traditional corporate IT security.

"We protect sensitive research and sensitive people," said David Chen, Archon's CEO, in a statement. "Lisa's experience investigating the threats we're trying to defend against makes her uniquely qualified to build our security program."

Yun's FBI career focused on nation-state cyber intrusions targeting the defense industrial base. She was part of the team that investigated several high-profile intrusion campaigns targeting defense contractors between 2017 and 2023, including operations attributed to Chinese and Russian intelligence services. She holds a BS in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon and completed the FBI's Cyber Training Program at Quantico.

In a brief LinkedIn post announcing the move, Yun wrote: "After seven years of chasing threat actors, I'm switching to the other side of the equation. Looking forward to building something instead of just protecting it."

She reports directly to Chen — not to the COO or CTO, a structure that gives her unusual organizational independence and suggests Chen considers information security a strategic function rather than an operational one.

Yun did not respond to a request for additional comment.