Brian E. Ray

Professor Brian Ray has extensive experience in cybersecurity and data privacy, in particular in the context of smart cities and surveillance technology. He co-founded and directs the Center for Cybersecurity and Privacy Protection and edits the Center-sponsored SSRN Cybersecurity, Data Privacy and eDiscovery eJournal. Ray also co-founded the Cleveland eDiscovery, Data Security and Privacy Roundtable, an informal group of lawyers, judges and academics that meets monthly to discuss issues surrounding electronic discovery, cybersecurity and data privacy issues. 

Ray's research focuses on cybersecurity and privacy regulation, surveillance technology, and government data governance, collection and use policies. He is part of a small team of researchers that in 2018 established the Internet of Things Collaborative (IoTC) with a $1.75 million Digital Excellence Grant from the Cleveland Foundation, and he is the principal investigator working with an interdisciplinary team of faculty researching privacy policies and practices for the use of facial recognition technologies by state and local governments.

Ray has served on the CyberOhio Advisory Board since 2016 and helped draft the Board’s proposal that became the Ohio Data Protection Act. In 2019 he was appointed to the Ohio Attorney General’s Facial Recognition Task Force, which produced recommendations for a comprehensive new policy for Ohio’s statewide facial recognition database. He is on the Governance Committee of the Northeast Ohio CyberConsortium's Workforce Development Committee and is a member of the Sedona Conference's Data Security and Privacy Liability Working Group. He was selected to participate in the Yale University Cyber Leaders Forum in 2017, and SC Magazine named him one of three Outstanding Cybersecurity Educator in the 2017 Reboot Leadership Awards.

Ray also is an expert in comparative and international law. His book, Engaging with Social Rights: Participation, Procedure and Democracy in South Africa's Second-Wave provides a comprehensive analysis of the South African Constitutional Court's social rights decisions. He was a Fulbright Scholar in South Africa and has published extensively on comparative constitutional law and social rights.