Former Interior CIO Tipton to lead (ISC)2

Former Interior Department chief information officer W. Hord Tipton has been named executive director of the International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium.

He replaces Eddie Zeitler as executive director of (ISC)². Zeitler left to pursue other interests, (ISC)² officials said.

Tipton served as CIO of the Interior Department for more than five years. During his tenure, he managed IT operations for 2,500 Interior offices with 3,650 IT employees, 5,800 contractors and an IT portfolio of $1.2 billion.

In early 2007, he left Interior to become president and chief executive officer of Ironman Technologies, which had a client list that included IBM, Perot Systems, EDS, Booz Allen Hamilton and Symantec.

Tipton has been a member of (ISC)²’s board of directors since 2005, and a member of (ISC)2’s government advisory board since 2004.

Before serving as CIO, Tipton had worked in a number of business areas at Interior. He was directly responsible for balancing resource usage involving forestry, recreational programs, mineral extraction, law enforcement and wildland firefighters through the U.S. He also served as director for international programs for the Minerals Management Service. Earlier in his career, Tipton had worked for 13 years as an engineer for Union Carbide Nuclear in Oak Ridge, Tenn. He also received the Distinguished Rank Award for government service in 2005 from President Bush.

“I look forward to working with our certified members around the world to take (ISC)² to the next level as the leader in developing security professionals across the globe,” Tipton said. “I also want to increase awareness beyond the security community of the contribution our members and our organization offer each and every day to make the cyber world a safe place for all.”

The (ISC)² has certified more than 60,000 information security professionals in 135 countries since its founding in 1989.