Former NSA Director Paul Nakasone Opens Private Security Advisory Firm
The retired four-star general who ran America's signals intelligence agency for six years is now taking his expertise to paying clients in government, business, and beyond.
Key points
- General Paul Nakasone, who led the National Security Agency (NSA) from 2018 to 2024, has launched a new private advisory business called the Nakasone Group.
- The firm will advise government leaders, large corporations, and prominent private families on cybersecurity, geopolitical risk, and personal security threats.
- Nakasone brings direct experience overseeing U.S. Offensive and defensive cyber operations, including the command that ran cyber missions against foreign adversaries.
- The move follows a pattern of senior intelligence officials moving into private consulting after federal service.
What is the Nakasone Group and who is it for?
The Nakasone Group is a new advisory firm built around one specific credential: its founder ran the most powerful signals intelligence (spy communications) and offensive cyber operation in the world for six years.
General Paul Nakasone led the NSA, the U.S. Government agency responsible for intercepting foreign communications and protecting American government networks, from 2018 until his retirement in early 2024. He simultaneously led United States Cyber Command, the military unit that carries out offensive cyber operations against foreign targets. That dual role gave him a vantage point that almost nobody else on earth has held.
The new firm, first reported by SecurityWeek, will counsel government bodies, corporations, and wealthy private families facing serious security or geopolitical risks.
Should ordinary people care about this?
Directly, probably not. The Nakasone Group isn't pitching small businesses or individuals.
As SecurityWeek reported, though, the firm's existence signals something worth knowing: the line between public intelligence work and private security advice keeps blurring. When a four-star general moves to a paying advisory role, the pattern-recognition built over decades follows, to the extent the law allows.
For large organisations in critical infrastructure, this kind of senior-level advice is increasingly seen as necessary. Nation-state hackers, tracked by vendors like Mandiant and CrowdStrike under names like Sandworm (a Russian military hacking cluster) or Volt Typhoon (a Chinese group focused on U.S. Infrastructure), target these sectors persistently. Organisations that once thought a basic IT team was enough are rethinking that position.
What does this signal about the threat environment?
Demand is real. Nakasone wouldn't be launching a firm if clients weren't already asking.
Senior practitioners from the intelligence community carry something no vendor can fully replicate: operational knowledge of how adversary groups actually work, not just what their malware looks like after the fact. At medium confidence, a firm like this will attract clients worried about state-sponsored hackers working for Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran.
If the people who ran America's cyber defences at the highest level are now selling advice to private organisations, those organisations clearly believe the threat is serious enough to pay for it. That should inform how any organisation thinks about its own security posture. We covered the White House's parallel move to pull private firms into government-led cybercrime efforts on 13 August 2026, and this follows the same directional logic: the public-private boundary in national security is contracting fast.
