According to a blog post authored by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano, former McAfee executive Phyllis Schneck is to become the new Deputy Under Secretary for Cybersecurity for the National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD) at DHS. The move follows an earlier announcement of one of the largest cybersecurity contract awards to date made by the agency.
Schneck is the current Chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Cyber Forensics and Training Alliance, a partnership between corporations, government and law enforcement for cyber analysis to combat international cyber crime. She is another in the constantly revolving door between key government positions and Big IT government contractors, a trend which has raised questions about the overall quality of contracting relationships between the government and executive appointees in mid-career cycles.
Currently, Schneck is also Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for the Global Public Sector at McAfee, Inc. Before that she served as various senior and information science positions at Research Integration for Secure Computing, eCommSecurity, SecureWorks, Inc., Avalon Communications, CygnaCom Solutions, the MITRE Corporation, Computer Sciences Corporation, IBM, NASA and the University Of Maryland. She also served for eight years as chairman of the FBI’s InfraGard National Board of Directors and founding president of InfraGard Atlanta, growing the InfraGard program to over 30,000 members nationwide in the past decade, and fostering a relationship between InfraGard and DHS.
