Veda Sims: A measure of risk

Name: Veda Sims

Age: 36

Organization: Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board

Title: Chief Information Security Officer

Nominated for: Leading the in-depth security risk assessments that paved the way for taking Recovery.gov to the cloud and setting up the board’s records management program.

First IT mentor: John Hetrick was my first IT mentor when I joined the team at AT&T Government Solutions early in my career. He was instrumental in making me a strong advocate for using a systematic and holistic approach to information assurance.

Latest accomplishment on the job: Creating an information security program from the ground up for a federal agency.

Career highlight: Receiving formal recognition from Recovery Board Chairman Earl Devaney and former Federal CIO Vivek Kundra for my work on migrating Recovery.gov to a secure public cloud infrastructure.

Your advice for a government IT wannabe: Be innovative but realistic. Nothing is more counterproductive than implementing cutting-edge technology only to realize that it is too convoluted, too expensive to maintain or, worse, introduces unintended challenges or vulnerabilities.

What you enjoy most about working in government IT: Identifying creative IT solutions that enable efficiency and agility without compromising an agency’s security infrastructure.

Three favorite job-related apps: Recovery.gov HD, neu.Annotate PDF, Dual Browser Free

Dream non-IT-related job: Personal trainer and naturopathic nutritionist

Read the next Rising Star profile or view the full list of winners.