Lieutenant Colonel Sterling served in the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) for more than 24 years in a number of staff and command roles. During that time he worked with the MITRE Corporation and US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) to create the Caribbean Information Sharing Network (CISN) in 1998 and served as the head of its technical working group (TWG) until 2007. He also led, or participated in, the project teams that were responsible for all major technology changes in the JDF between 1998 and 2019. With nearly two decades spent in various ICT and Cyber related roles he is a respected authority on Cybersecurity Regionally and Internationally.

As Director of the Cyber Incident Response Team Division in the Office of the Prime Minister, he has day to day responsibility for governance, risk and compliance within Jamaica’s Cyber ecosystem. He manages the National Security Operations Centre (NSOC) and the Jamaica Cyber Incident Response Team (JaCIRT) providing world class vulnerability and crisis management as well as incident response. He and his team triage, categorise, refer, respond to and document cyber incidents in Jamaica.

Among his qualifications, Col Sterling holds certificates in Cybersecurity from the US Army War College, George Marshall Centre for Security Studies, and Carnegie Mellon University, a Diploma in Systems Automation from the US Arm Signal School, a Bachelors degree, with honours, in Computer Science (University of Technology, Jamaica) and Master’s Degrees in Defence Studies (Cyber) from the Royal Military College of Canada, Master of Science Degree in Cybersecurity from Universidad Isabel I, Madrid, Spain. He also holds certifications from the IEEE in the management of Cybersecurity in the Energy Sector and from the United Nations in the transformation of Digital Governments to Smart Governments.

An avid reader and sports enthusiast he enjoys the outdoors as well as solitude and a good book.