Yoran named head of national cybersecurity

FedCIRC

Homeland Security Department officials today named Amit Yoran as director of the department's National Cyber Security Division, which serves as the country's central coordination point for all cyber incident awareness, preparation, warning and response.

Secretary Tom Ridge created the division in June, and officials have been working to find a leader who could bring the necessary experience and presence to work with government and industry on infrastructure protection. Yoran, currently vice president of managed security services at Symantec Corp., will ably fill that role, said Robert Liscouski, assistant secretary for infrastructure protection at DHS.

Liscouski spoke at a breakfast meeting sponsored by the Information Technology Association of America.

The division includes many of the pieces in the federal cybersecurity world that moved over to DHS in the transition, including the Federal Computer Incident Response Center, the National Infrastructure Protection Center and the Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office.

Officials within the Cyber Security division have been continuing their work even without a permanent leader, and have started developing coordinated warning and response procedures in the course of handling incidents such as the Blaster worm and SoBig.F virus over the last month. However, having a leader in place will allow them to move forward on many of the new initiatives that were included in the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, said Sallie McDonald, acting director of outreach and awareness at the division.