Homeland Security’s Barry West: Collaboration leads to better situational awareness

Dr. Barry West has a title that means business. As senior advisor and senior accountable official for risk management at the Homeland Security Department, he basically has the job of seeing that the Trump administration executive order on cybersecurity is carried out at DHS.

He said DHS, from a cybersecurity standpoint, is headed to what he called “a more federated approach and more collaboration” among the 22 components that make up the department. Until recently, he said, they each tended to do its own thing with respect to continuous monitoring of networks.

What’s different now he said, is more sharing of information among security operations centers, which leads to better situational awareness. But, he said it’s an ongoing process that will take time to mature.

Host

Tom Temin, Federal News Radio

Tom Temin has been the host of the Federal Drive since 2006. Tom has been reporting on and providing insight to technology markets for more than 30 years.  Prior to joining Federal News Radio, Tom was a long-serving editor-in-chief of Government Computer News and Washington Technology magazines. Tom also contributes a regular column on government information technology.

Guest

Dr. Barry West, Senior Advisor and Senior Accountable Official for Risk Management, U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Dr. West is a career technologist with 30 years in the information technology field.

He was recently appointed as the Senior Advisor and Senior Accountable Official for Risk Management for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.  Prior to his current position, he was the President of the Mason Harriman Group, which is a management consulting company based out of Washington, D.C.

He has 27 years of government service to include being Chief Information Officer at five different government organizations –

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), Department of Commerce (DOC), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) during hurricane Katrina and the National Weather Service (NWS).

His government service also included time in the U.S. Air Force where he was selected as the top individual for his career field by winning the Weather Observer of the Year Award from among 2,000+ competitors.

Dr. West also held private sector executive positions at S.E. Solutions Inc. and Tab Books Inc.

He is the past President of two of the largest IT associations in the United States:

American Council for Technology (ACT) and the Association for Federal Information Resources Management (AFFIRM).

He has represented the United States Government Information Technology community at four different world-wide gatherings of NATO countries.

Dr. West completed his Executive Doctorate in Business from Georgia State University with a focus on Cloud Computing.  He was recently appointed by Georgia State University to be their Executive-In-Residence.  He has published in IEEE Computer Society, IT Professional journal and the European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS) journal article where his research focusing on cloud computing was selected for publication.

Dr. West received an honorary degree in Business from his alma mater- Northern Michigan University (NMU) in May 2015 where he also delivered the Commencement Speech for the Spring 2015 graduates.

Dr. West was selected as the Executive-In-Residence at Northern Michigan University for the Fall 2015.  He is also an Emeritus member of the Government Business Executive Forum (GBEF).

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