Influential Women Features Shauna Briley: Protecting Critical Systems & Opening Cybersecurity Careers For Those In Need

HUNTSVILLE, AL, UNITED STATES, October 22, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Risk Management Lead at Chenega Analytic Business Solutions Supports the U.S. Army With Risk Management Framework Expertise, Mentorship, and a Commitment to Second Chances

Huntsville, Alabama – Shauna Briley is a Risk Management Lead at Chenega Analytic Business Solutions, where she serves as a Risk Management Framework (RMF) Team Lead supporting the Army Materiel Command in Huntsville. She holds the Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) credential from ISACA, one of six cybersecurity certifications she has earned. Her specialties include risk management, IT infrastructure, and cybersecurity. She leads and mentors teams through the full RMF lifecycle, including system categorization, control selection, security assessments, and authorization packaging. She also advises leadership on risk analysis, incident response, and continuous monitoring.

Shauna’s career spans about three decades in information technology. She began in military service as a software analyst before moving into network administration and progressively senior IT roles. In 2013, an internship with the Missile Defense Agency led to her formal certification in cybersecurity leadership. She has since held multiple Information System Security Officer positions across Army commands, guiding units through Assess and Authorize processes and vulnerability management. She also helped those units transition from legacy DIACAP protocols to the Risk Management Framework. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Resource Management from Troy University.

She attributes her success to hard work, dedication, and refusing to let obstacles stand in the way of her goals. She leads by example and has remained eager to learn at every stage of her career. Shauna believes that a setback or a no is never the end of the road, but an opportunity to pivot, and that knowing one’s worth and mastering one’s craft lead to the goal. She draws inspiration from Nelson Mandela’s idea that a person never truly loses, but either wins or learns. Viewing setbacks as data rather than failure keeps her motivated in military and cybersecurity work, which often involves setbacks, tight deadlines, and difficult environments.

The best career advice Shauna has received is to be her authentic self, to voice her opinions because they matter, to avoid being intimidated by others, and to always know her own worth. For young women entering cybersecurity, her advice is to learn their trade and keep seeking knowledge. She believes deep expertise makes it harder for anyone to make them feel inferior and allows them to stand their ground with confidence. Mastering one’s craft and speaking with confidence, she says, earns respect.

In her Influential Women article, Beyond the Firewalls, Shauna writes about her experience as a Black woman in defense contracting. She describes often being the only woman or person of color in the room, having her ideas overlooked until a male colleague repeated them, and having her authority questioned more than her peers’. These slights, she notes, are rarely overt hostility but subtle and draining effects of institutional bias. She learned to read rooms for both threats and allies, and she let technical results serve as her strongest answer to doubt, earning her CISM and CASP+ certifications along the way. Her voice could be dismissed, but her data could not, and successful authorization packages and flawless compliance reports made her case for her. She learned that consistent, high-quality work is a form of communication everyone eventually understands. Having felt unsupported herself, she is strongly protective of her team, and having seen her own hard work go unrecognized, she makes a point of celebrating their accomplishments. In the high-pressure RMF field, she treats burnout as a serious threat to mission success, because a demoralized team cannot secure a network. She advocates leading with empathy and building an inclusive culture where talented people want to stay.

Today, Shauna’s focus is on supporting the U.S. Army with its risk management, cybersecurity, and IT infrastructure needs. Discipline, goal orientation, continuing education, and strong leadership are the values that guide her at work and in her personal life. She wants to make a difference through everything she does. She was recognized as part of the Influential Women 2026 edition representing Huntsville, an honor that reflects her impact in a field that still lacks gender balance. Beyond work, she is dedicated to community involvement and mentoring others. Shauna founded Homeless to High Tech, a program that teaches cybersecurity skills to homeless adults as a pathway to stable careers.

From her start as a military software analyst to her leadership in Army cybersecurity, Shauna has shown how discipline, expertise, and resilience can overcome barriers. She continues to protect critical systems while lifting others into a field that needs their talent. Through her leadership, mentorship, and community service, Shauna Briley is proving that every setback can become a lesson and every person can find a path forward.

Learn More about Shauna Briley:

Through her Influential Women profile: https://influentialwomen.com/connect/shauna-briley

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