New Federal CIO Has Cyber Track Record

Incoming federal chief information officer Steven VanRoekel says experience safeguarding the cloud at his former employer, the Federal Communications Commission, has prepared him to improve the security of digital assets governmentwide.

In October, the then-FCC managing director announced that a new cloud-based environment hosting FCC.gov complied with a laundry list of security controls recommended under the 2002 Federal Information Security Management Act. "Our team has fully abided by the FISMA standards throughout this process; at relaunch, FCC.gov will have met or exceeded both low and moderate levels of clearance, enabling us to distribute information, power collaboration and innovate freely," VanRoekel wrote on the FCC blog.

During his tenure, the agency released a landmark national broadband plan to expand Internet service. It calls on the executive branch to promote online security and protect networks for power distribution and other infrastructure, so that Americans will trust the Web more.

VanRoekel told reporters during a conference call on Thursday that he was the first boss to hire an FCC chief information security officer.

Having already met with White House cyber czar Howard Schmidt this summer, he said that network security "is of course a tremendous priority and an area of focus we're going to take forward."