Mike Locatis will become the new assistant secretary for cybersecurity and communications at the Homeland Security Department, multiple government sources confirmed.

Locatis is the Energy Department’s chief information officer and has been in that position since October 2010.

Locatis becomes the second-highest-profile federal technology executive to join NPPD over the last four months. John Streufert, the former State Department chief information security officer, joined DHS as the new director of the National Cybersecurity Division in January.

“Mike brings a wealth of experience and an understanding of information management, cybersecurity and public safety communications within the interconnected Federal, state and local governments,” said Rand Beers, DHS undersecretary for NPPD, in an email to employees obtained by Federal News Radio.

Beers continued: “Mike comes to DHS from the Department of Energy (DOE), where he served as Chief Information Officer and led the development of the DOE Joint Cybersecurity Coordination Center (JC3), which applies a proactive approach to risk management policy enterprise-wide and vastly improves situational awareness, incident management and cross-agency collaboration. He also brings the unique experience of serving in leadership positions at the federal, state and local levels of government as well as the private sector.”

Bobbi Stempfley will return to her role as the DHS deputy assistant secretary for cybersecurity and communications. She served as the the acting assistant secretary for the past two months.

In his new role, Locatis will lead the coordinated efforts of the cybersecurity and communications office and its components, including the National Cyber Security Division, the Office of Emergency Communications and the National Communications System.

Locatis also will work with the public and private sectors, as well as international partners to prepare for, prevent and respond to catastrophic incidents that could degrade or overwhelm the nation’s strategic cyber and communications infrastructure.

At Energy, Locatis helped improve the agency’s IT infrastructure. He wrote in a blog post on CIO.gov last year that DoE’s data center consolidation strategy focuses heavily on improving utilization and being cost efficient wherever closing down data centers is not an option.

Before coming to the federal government, Locatis was the CIO for Colorado and California.

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