Denver, Colorado, October 27, 2026 — Deep Fathom, a provider of regulatory and compliance automation solutions powered by Agentic AI, today announced that David McKeown has joined its Advisory Board.
McKeown served four decades in the federal government across the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, and the United States Air Force. He served as deputy chief information officer for cybersecurity and chief information security officer at the Department of Defense, where he oversaw the Department’s cybersecurity program and policy worldwide.
In that role, McKeown directed cyber defense for an enterprise of roughly 3 million users and 4 million endpoints across some 6,000 facilities. He was at the forefront of the Department’s zero trust implementation, focused on its enterprise encryption modernization, and shifted its risk management from compliance toward actionable security. Supply chain risk sat in the same portfolio, and he spearheaded the Department’s enterprise supply chain risk frameworks. He also served as the Department’s acting principal deputy chief information officer for 10 months and the Department’s Special Access Program CIO for 14 months.
“Compliance matters because it tells you whether your defenses are working,” said McKeown. “The question I cared about was whether our networks were actually defended, and whether we could show it. Every company in the defense supply chain faces that question, and at that scale you can’t answer it without automation. That’s the problem Deep Fathom is working on, and it’s why I signed on.”
Earlier, at the Pentagon, McKeown ran the cybersecurity and enterprise services centers of the Joint Service Provider, including the Pentagon Computer Incident Response Team, delivering IT and defensive cyber operations to 40,000 customers that included the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. From there, he moved to the Department of Justice to lead its enterprise IT services.
During his 27-year Air Force career, he led numerous communications organizations. In his final assignment as a member of the Air Staff, he led all global cybersecurity programs for the 700,000-employee United States Air Force.
“Compliance was supposed to be the proof that security is real. Too often it became a substitute for it,” said Steven Hess, chief executive officer and co-founder of Deep Fathom. “Dave has worked both sides of that line, accrediting Pentagon networks and running the team that defended them. We asked him to hold our platform to that standard and to tell us when we miss it.”
For the defense industrial base, Deep Fathom delivers continuous readiness against NIST 800-171 and evolving assessment and certification requirements. Evidence is captured as work happens, so teams can see what is complete, what needs attention, and what they can substantiate. The platform also supports prime contractors and integrators, giving their suppliers a shared way to organize readiness work and evidence and helping the prime review what those suppliers provide.
McKeown will advise Deep Fathom on cybersecurity strategy, supply chain risk, and product direction.
McKeown joins four other Deep Fathom advisors: Savan Kong on government acquisition and user experience, Rob Bair on national security, Rich Vorwaller on product and security architecture, and Tanya Loh on positioning and go-to-market strategy.
Learn more at www.deepfathom.ai and follow Deep Fathom on LinkedIn.
About Deep Fathom
Deep Fathom helps organizations achieve, maintain, and prove ongoing compliance with cybersecurity and regulatory requirements. For the defense industrial base, its platform keeps NIST 800-171 readiness, evidence, and remediation work current as assessment and certification requirements evolve. Its Agentic AI orchestration connects the work being done to the evidence needed to substantiate it, reducing administrative burden, rework, and dependence on point-in-time compliance exercises.