Sara Mosley: Locking down the State Department's Internet connections

Name: Sara Mosley

Age: 40

Organization: State Department Information Management Bureau, Office of Information Assurance

Title: Senior Security Engineer. Previously, Lead Network Architect

Nominated for: Leading the design and deployment of the State Department’s Trusted Internet Connections initiative, which the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team certified for single- and multi-agency use. Mosley also is working with other federal agencies to develop standards and processes related to the Continuous Cybersecurity Monitoring initiative.

First IT mentor: Al Gordon, who was my direct manager at one of my first jobs out of college. Mr. Gordon saw my interest in networking and gave me an opportunity to join the networking team. He encouraged me to obtain a variety of industry certifications and gave me increased responsibilities and leadership opportunities at the start of my career.

Latest accomplishment on the job: I am proud of the recent work I am doing as part of a dynamic team supporting diplomats around the world by securing the State Department’s worldwide IT infrastructure.

Career highlight: As a chief network architect for a large government agency, I redesigned its Internet core backbone to provide exponential capacity, redundancy capabilities and the consolidation of a number of smaller Internet portals that resulted in greater efficiency and cost savings to the agency. In addition, I co-authored a Cisco Press book and have recently been recognized by Cisco for maintaining my CCIE for 10 years.

Favorite job-related bookmark: SANS Institute.

Favorite App: I'm not a big app person, but if you're talking technology in general, I have a few favorites: Wii, DVR, Netbook.

Dream non-IT related job: I would love to have an opportunity to work with young women in underserved areas in the United States and underdeveloped countries around the world to teach and expose them about how to use technology to improve their life and as a career path.

Read more about Sara Mosley on GCN.com.

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