The practicalities of cybersecurity threat intelligence

The In Focus mini-series examines more closely issues and topics of importance to federal agencies and contractors. Each month, Federal News Radio speaks with key stakeholders to better understand challenges and opportunities. This month focuses on Cybersecurity Threat Intelligence.

Tim Ruland’s background gives him a practical edge to the cybersecurity threat intelligence discussion.  During the interview, he talked about the practical aspects of gaining a better understanding of cybersecurity threat intelligence.   It’s important to set priorities, which is commonly referred to as “orchestration.” Terrific in theory, but one must select the correct tools to combine these prioritized tasks properly.  In response to Zulfikar Ramzan’s statement about 1400 new cybersecurity companies coming on the market in the past year, Tim talked about the difficulty of picking the correct vendor for due to specific needs.

Host

John Gilroy, Host of Federal Tech Talk, Federal News Radio

John Gilroy has been a member of the Washington D.C. technology community for over twenty years. In 2007 he began weekly interviews on Federal News Radio called “Federal Tech Talk with John Gilroy.”   His 428 interviews provides the basis for profitable referral business. In 2009 he created a successful breakfast club of previous radio guests called The Technology Leadership Roundtable. He has been instrumental in two of his guests forming their own radio shows:  Derrick Dortch with “Fed Access” and Aileen Black and Gigi Schumm with “Women in Washington.”

In 2011 he began teaching a course in social media marketing at Georgetown University; in March of 2014, John won the Tropaia Award for Outstanding Faculty.  John conducts monthly corporate training for large companies on how to leverage social media to generate revenue.

Guest

Tim Ruland, Chief Information Security Officer, U.S. Census Bureau

Tim Ruland is the Census Bureau’s Chief  Information Security Officer (CISO). He reports directly to the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and provides regular briefings and support to Census Bureau and Department of Commerce senior executives.

Ruland began his career in the military where he served 13 years in the US Army.  He served in many assignments; including Thailand, Germany, Fort Ord, CA, and Ft. Meade, MD, as a Military Intelligence Analyst and Linguist (Vietnamese, Russian and Korean) and Military Policeman.  Upon his honorable discharge from the Army, he served as a Software Configuration Manager with a Defense contractor for four years.

Ruland began his career at the Census Bureau in 1991 when he was hired to establish a configuration management process for the 1992 Economic Census. After which he earned the position of Division Security Officer.  After spending 18 months as the Division Security Officer, Configuration Manager and system administrator, Ruland moved to the ADP Security Branch. The ADP Security Branch was a small branch of seven people in the Administrative and Finance Division.  In 1998, Ruland was promoted to Branch Chief where his first action was to change the name of the organization to better reflect the more diverse role of the organization, the IT Security Branch. Ruland has been instrumental in the development of the Census Bureau IT Security Program and the office has grown to four staffs consisting of 23 employees and approximately 20 contractors in support of the enterprise IT Security Program.

Ruland is a CISSP, CISM, CFCP and holds a Master’s Certificate in Project Management from George Washington University.  He has completed the Framework for FISMA Seminar Series hosted by the Potomac Forum and is a FISMA Fellow. He is currently working on a degree as a Paralegal. Ruland holds a Sociology Degree from the University of Maryland.

In his spare time, he rides a Harley Davidson and has been riding as Santa Claus for the past couple of years in a Toy Run to provide gifts to needy children. He also rides in a number of veteran related motorcycle events.

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