Security forum members to meet in May

http://www.fcw.com/article88496-04-05-05-Web

By Florence Olsen
April 5, 2005 

Members of a new public/private forum for government and industry 
security executives say they have wasted no time getting started on 
efforts to improve federal agencies' annual information security 
grades. 

The forum, known as the Chief Information Security Officers (CISO) 
Exchange, will hold an advisory board meeting this month and its first 
membership meeting in May, Stephen O'Keeffe, the group's executive 
director, announced today at the FOSE government information 
technology conference in Washington, D.C.

O'Keeffe said members have already begun talking with officials in the 
Government Accountability Office and with federal inspectors general 
about ways to raise the federal government's overall security grade 
above a D-plus, which it received this year.

The CISO Exchange is a new model of a public/private partnership 
"designed to move the government forward in its information security 
posture," O'Keeffe said. The forum offers a venue for public- and 
private-sector CISOs to exchange ideas for strengthening their 
organizations' information security policies, procedures and 
practices.

All funding for the forum will come from industry members, O'Keeffe 
said. 

He introduced co-chairman, Vance Hitch, the Justice Department's chief 
information officer who is chairman of the CIO Council's Cyber 
Security and Privacy Committee, and co-chairwoman Melissa Wojciak, 
staff director of the Government Reform Committee.

The forum has six government advisory board members, who will serve 
one-year terms. They are Daniel Galik, chief security officer at the 
Internal Revenue Service, representing the Treasury Department; Dennis 
Heretick, Justice's CISO; Robert Lentz, the Defense Department's CISO; 
Jane Scott Norris, the State Department's CISO; Lisa Schlosser, the 
Department of Housing and Urban Development's CIO; and Robert West, 
the Homeland Security Department's CISO.

The advisory board will also have six industry members, including 
Austin Yerks, president of federal sector business development at 
Computer Sciences Corp., and Kenneth Ammon, president and co-founder 
of NetSec Government Solutions. Four additional advisory members have 
not been named. 

O'Keeffe stressed that the forum will have a practical agenda. Its 
members plan to publish an annual report on federal information 
security priorities and operational issues and to host an awards 
dinner on the evening that Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) announces next 
year's federal computer security report card grades.

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