Category Archives: Michael Sulmeyer

White House to nominate NSA veterans Chris Inglis, Jen Easterly as national cyber director, CISA chief

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President Joe Biden has picked two veterans of the National Security Agency, Chris Inglis and Jen Easterly, for senior cybersecurity positions at the White House and Department of Homeland Security, the White House said Monday. Biden intends to nominate Inglis as the national cyber director and Easterly as the director of DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the White House said in a statement. Both positions are subject to Senate confirmation. The nominations come as the Biden administration continues to grapple with two high-profile hacking operations linked to Russia and China that have exposed vulnerabilities in federal, state and local government networks. The national cyber director is a new, congressionally mandated role designed to make the government better at responding to those types of major hacks. If confirmed, Inglis, who spent nearly three decades at the NSA, will be charged with coordinating offensive and defensive operations across the vast federal […]

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Michael Sulmeyer, who held cyber posts under Trump and Obama, gets Biden White House gig

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Michael Sulmeyer, a senior adviser to National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command leader Gen. Paul Nakasone, will take the position of senior director for cyber in the Biden White House. Sulmeyer’s selection came with no formal announcement. Instead, the transition website posted his position Monday evening. Sulmeyer is a cybersecurity veteran with broad experience, one of many to join the Biden administration. He’s also one of several whose tenures have included roles in the Trump administration. Beyond serving under Nakasone, he also served in the Obama administration at the Defense Department, where he was director for plans and operations for cyber policy. Between roles in the Trump and Obama administrations, he was director of the Belfer Center’s Cyber Security Project at the Harvard Kennedy School. He also wrote extensively for Lawfare on subjects like election security, federal cybersecurity strategy and DOD-related cybersecurity issues. In the past, the National Security […]

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Rex Tillerson proposes new ‘cyber bureau’ at the State Department

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Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has a plan to create a new “cyber bureau” within the State Department that would focus on building relationships with foreign governments to coordinate on international cybersecurity priorities, according to a letter sent Tuesday to the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The proposition first surfaced publicly during a committee hearing Tuesday on the state of U.S. cyber diplomacy. Former State Department Cybersecurity Coordinator Christopher Painter and former Pentagon cybersecurity adviser Michael Sulmeyer criticized Tillerson for shuttering one such office, which Painter previously oversaw, last year during a myriad other cuts. “The Department of State must be organized to lead diplomatic efforts related to all aspects of cyberspace,” says Tillerson’s letter to committee Chairman Edward Royce, R-Calif. Since Tillerson took the helm, the State Department’s cyber diplomacy mission had been consolidated and wrapped into the Bureau of Economic Affairs’ Office of International Communications and Information Policy. The decision was […]

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