Former Interior CIO Lands at ISC Squared

W. Hord Tipton, who was chief information officer at the Interior Department for five years before retiring in January 2007, has been appointed executive director of the International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium, which certifies information security professionals.

Tipton began serving as CIO at Interior shortly after a U.S. district judge ordered in 2001 that employees in the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs and other offices disconnect from the Internet. The ruling, which was part of a class action lawsuit filed against Interior for mismanagement of Indian trust accounts, was made after court-appointed specialists had hacked into the department’s systems and accessed data in the accounts, which track royalties paid to Indian tribes for payments covering such things as mineral rights, oil and grazing.

U.S. District Judge James Robertson ruled in May that BIA and the other department offices (the Office of Hearings and Appeals, the Office of the Special Trustee and the Office of Historical Trust Accounting) could reconnect to the Internet, arguing that "it is not my role to weigh IT security risks."