Rice is a 1994 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and has a master's degree in Information Warfare and Systems Engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School. He served as a Global Network Vulnerability analyst for the National Security Agency and as a Special Duty Cryptologic officer for the Navy.

He's also on the faculty of IANS, an information security research company. He also works with the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, a nonprofit organization that researches the potential for cyberattacks and their impact. Before that he worked for the security firm Neohapsis.

He is the author of the 2007 book, "Geekonomics."