From: GovInfoSecurity.com
Mark Weatherford on DHS’s Growing Sway over Infosec Policy
The top Department of Homeland Security policymaker focused exclusively on cybersecurity, Mark Weatherford, defends DHS’s ability to take a leading role in safeguarding civilian agencies and key national IT systems. His viewpoint challenges questions raised about the department’s capabilities by critics such as Sen. John McCain.
“With all due respect to the good senator, and you know he is one of my heroes, there was probably a point in time where DHS probably wasn’t the place where you would think that the cyber talent and the cyber [defense] should be, but that has changed,” Weatherford says in an interview with Information Security Media Group’s GovInfoSecurity. “We are more mature now. We are developing the talent. We have the chops to do this, and we are proving it on a daily basis.”
McCain, R-Ariz., is a leading critic in Congress on giving DHS more sway over coordinating cybersecurity among federal civilian agencies and the private sector, responsibilities being advanced by the Obama administration and Democratic lawmakers. Last year, in debating cybersecurity legislation, McCain said in a Senate floor speech: “I think I speak for many when I question the logic of putting this agency in charge of sensitive national security matters. They can’t even screen airline passengers without constant controversy.”
Recruiting Top Talent
But Weatherford suggests McCain’s assessments of DHS’s capabilities are outdated, and he hears of a growing confidence in the department’s ability to lead cyber-defense for the civilian part of the government and the nation. Since becoming deputy undersecretary in the fall 2011, Weatherford has been recruiting some of the top cybersecurity talent from other parts of the federal government to strengthen DHS’s IT security abilities [see Building DHS’s All-Star Cybersecurity Team].
“I’ve been very pleasantly surprised at the skill that we’re able to attract here at DHS … we’ve matured so much in the past year,” Weatherford says. “We weren’t even on people’s roadmap; we weren’t in people’s vision a year ago. Now, people know and are beginning to understand better what the mission of the Department of Homeland Security is in the cyber-arena and that they can actually come here and do some pretty dang interesting stuff. Not to toot our horn too much, but we’re attracting some of the best talent out of some of the other civilian federal agencies that I’m pretty satisfied with. It’s causing some consternation in other organizations sometimes, but we’re having a lot of success with that.”
Among the talent Weatherford has attracted to DHS include John Streufert, who as State Department chief information security officer rolled out a continuous monitoring program that’s credited with reducing IT vulnerabilities. Streufert, as DHS director of federal network resilience, is helping other agencies deploy continuous monitoring [see Continuous Monitoring and the Cloud].
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