IT Specialist, Department of Homeland Security
Teresa Proctor spent a couple of years as a federal contractor to the Department of Homeland Security and then applied for federal employment. In both capacities, she has been instrumental in helping DHS gain greater insight into — and mitigate — cybersecurity risks.
She provides expertise and leadership for the team that ensures that information security programs and systems for DHS headquarters and all component agencies meet federal compliance standards and reporting requirements.
She has been the chief point of contact for internal and external reporting activities under the Federal Information Security Management Act, which includes quarterly and annual reports to Congress and responses to Government Accountability Office and DHS inspector general audit requests.
In addition, Proctor played a key role in the initiative that developed a program to consolidate data from disparate scanning tools, allow analysis of the data for potential risks and provide actionable feedback so that system and asset owners can address vulnerabilities. When no commercial tool was available, she met the challenge by successfully building an innovative application that consolidates and normalizes all the continuous monitoring data from sources throughout the department.
She also developed an internal FISMA scorecard, which has enabled better decision-making at almost every level of leadership. Her efforts have become essential to the department meeting its FISMA goals. And she generously shared her expertise by spending several months as a detailee helping the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services enhance its FISMA compliance program.
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