Erik helps organizations deploy and govern AI, comply with cybersecurity and data privacy requirements, and respond effectively when technology risk becomes an investigation, dispute, or data security incident.
With more than 30 years of government, legal, military, and business experience, Erik helps organizations manage the legal and operational risks created by artificial intelligence, cybersecurity threats, and the collection and use of data. His practice spans the full risk lifecycle: advising on the responsible deployment of AI and other emerging technologies; developing compliance and governance programs; responding to data security incidents; and defending clients in investigations, enforcement matters, litigation, and other regulatory inquiries.
Erik co-leads Husch Blackwell’s AI, Cybersecurity, and Data Privacy practice areas. He works with legal, compliance, information security, technology, procurement, and executives to translate rapidly developing legal requirements into practical operating decisions across federal and state privacy laws, cybersecurity requirements, AI governance obligations, contractual risk, incident reporting, and regulatory expectations.
A significant part of Erik’s practice involves helping clients develop and deploy AI responsibly, including AI governance structures, acceptable-use policies, internal controls, risk and readiness assessments, vendor due diligence, contracting requirements, employee training, and the legal review of proposed AI use cases. His work addresses personal and confidential data, intellectual property, model reliability, testing and validation, human oversight, privilege and work-product protection, cybersecurity, and third-party risk.
Erik also counsels clients on comprehensive cybersecurity and data privacy compliance, including federal and state requirements, breach-notification obligations, risk assessments, cross-border data transfers, and developing policies, procedures, contractual protections, consent frameworks, retention practices, data-subject rights processes, and technical and organizational safeguards. He assists organizations in highly regulated sectors, including financial services, healthcare, critical infrastructure, and the Defense Industrial Base. When a cyber incident, regulatory inquiry, or technology-related dispute occurs, he brings together incident-response experience and a litigator’s perspective, advising on forensic investigations, containment and remediation, and communications with regulators, and representing clients facing privacy and cybersecurity claims, government investigations, and civil investigative demands.
Erik advises on AI and cybersecurity issues in government contracting, including the use of AI in work for government customers, protection of controlled information processed by AI systems, and allocation of responsibility among AI developers, operators, and contractors. He also counsels companies on emerging state data-broker and data-monetization laws, including whether their activities meet statutory definitions of a "data broker" and related registration, disclosure, and compliance obligations in states such as California, Texas, Oregon, and Vermont.
A retired Navy officer, Erik began his legal career handling government enforcement, and litigation matters in the aviation, mining, and maritime industries while serving in the Navy Reserve and working extensively with Navy intelligence. In 2018, he earned a master’s degree in cybersecurity law and returned to public service in the Office of General Counsel at the National Security Agency, where he served as acting deputy associate general counsel for the NSA’s cybersecurity practice group. Erik returned to Husch Blackwell in 2023.
Erik holds professional certifications in AI Governance, AI Strategy, Cyber Incident Planning and Response, and Information Privacy. With his credentials and experience in government, military, litigation, cybersecurity, privacy, and AI experience, he has the ability to approach technology matters from several directions at once—and he understands how regulators and government customers evaluate risk and how legal requirements must be converted into controls that business and technology teams can implement.