DISA's new vice director focuses on cyber tools for battle
Navy Rear Adm. Nancy Norton will help oversee the Defense Information Systems Agency's 8,000 employees and manage an $11 billion budget.
Rear Adm. Nancy Norton is the new second-in-command at DISA.
The Defense Information Systems Agency named Navy Rear Adm. Nancy Norton to the post of vice director. She took office Aug. 11.
As second-in-command, Norton will support Army Lt. Gen. Alan Lynn in overseeing DISA's $11 billion budget and 8,000 military, contract and civilian employees worldwide.
Her top priorities include ensuring the Defense Department's lethal capabilities, creating a joint mobile network and building a resilient workforce that can adapt to changing needs in battle. She is also looking to improve the outfitting of combat troops with battlefield cybersecurity capabilities.
Norton has worked with DISA before, including as a telecommunications commander for the Navy in Bahrain in 2004 and 2005. She won Federal 100 honors in 2015 for her work as director of command, control, communications and cyber at U.S. Pacific Command. There she helped build the foundation for how combatant commands participate in DOD-wide IT initiatives. From Pacific Command, Norton went on to serve as director of warfare integration under the deputy chief of naval operations for information dominance.
As she takes on her new role, Norton said DOD needs to focus on the "basics of cyber hygiene."
"We still have an awful lot of work [to do] across the DOD, and well beyond that, in the federal and commercial sectors and across the board in industry" to keep our systems safe, she said in a statement.