Top Cyber Defenders: Ahn and Mithal Lead the 2025 Charge

At a glance

• Demian Ahn and Maneesha Mithal were named to Cybersecurity Docket’s 2025 Incident Response 50 list.
• Ahn is recognized for his incident response work and his role on the legal side of cyber incidents.
• Mithal is recognized for her work on privacy, cybersecurity policy and consumer protection.
• Both honors show how much legal judgment now matters in breach response.

Two lawyers on the 2025 list

Breach response is no longer only a technical job. Lawyers now sit at the center of it, deciding what to disclose, when and to whom. Demian Ahn and Maneesha Mithal were recently named to Cybersecurity Docket’s 2025 Incident Response 50 List, which recognizes leading incident response practitioners. Their selection reflects how much the field now depends on people who understand both the attack and the law.

Demian Ahn’s incident response work

Demian Ahn has built his reputation in cybersecurity incident response. He is recognized for his strategic skill and for helping clients handle the legal side of incidents, the frameworks and obligations that companies around the world now face after a breach.

His expertise comes from years of handling complex cyber incidents and from a close understanding of the law around them. That matters in a crisis. Ahn focuses on the immediate response and on preparation beforehand, helping clients recover faster.

Maneesha Mithal’s policy career

Maneesha Mithal is known for her work on privacy and cybersecurity policy. Her recognition reflects a long career in those two areas and in consumer protection.

Mithal has helped shape privacy and security rules so they keep up with changing technology, and her knowledge of how regulators think makes her advice valuable when innovation and regulation pull in different directions.

What the picks say about the field

Naming Ahn and Mithal to the 2025 Incident Response 50 List shows where the field is heading. Leadership now calls for strategic foresight, legal knowledge and an understanding of policy.

Cyber incidents keep getting harder to manage. Ahn and Mithal show that a good response goes beyond technical fixes, covering legal, ethical and consumer concerns too.

What the list means for the next generation

For lawyers and security leaders coming up, Ahn and Mithal are models worth studying. Their work shows the value of strategic, informed responses when a breach hits.

As more of life moves online, people like them will shape how companies respond to attacks. Their influence will last.

Frank Jones, CISSP

Frank Jones has loved computers from the age of 13. Frank got his hacking career started when he downloaded a war dialing program that he used to detect dial up modems in his hometown of Chicago. Frank Jones now works as a JAVA coder and cyber security researcher.