DHS names key cybersecurity staff

02.06.2009
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano tapped Philip Reitinger as director of the National Cybersecurity Center (NCSC), replacing , who quit the post earlier this year citing turf battles with other agncies.

Reitinger will be responsible for collecting, analyzing, integrating and sharing cybersecurity information among federal agencies, the DHS said in a statement Monday.

Reitinger, a former Microsoft Corp. cybersecurity executive, will also continue in his current role as deputy undersecretary of the National Protection and Programs Directorate at the DHS.

His appointment was one of three key personnel announcements made by the DHS on the cybersecurity front. Napolitano also picked Greg Schaffer to be assistant secretary for cybersecurity and communications (CS&C), and Bruce McConnell as counselor to the deputy undersecretary at the NPPD.

McConnell will be a senior adviser to Reitinger on "strategic and policy matters" related to the NPPD, the DHS said. The NPPD includes the CS&C, the office of infrastructure protection and the US-VISIT program, which provides visa-issuing posts with biometric identification technology. He was also part of the Obama-Biden transition team and was involved in information policy and technology-related matters.

Schaffer, meanwhile, will be in charge of coordinating cybersecurity efforts across the NPPD and in ensuring that public and private sector organizations and international partners work together to mitigate threats to U.S. interests in cyberspace. He replaces Gregory Garcia who was the first to be appointed as assistant secretary of the CS&C by former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff in 2006. Schaffer was previously a cybersecurity executive with Altell Communications and PricewaterhouseCoopers.