Cybersecurity Policy: Keeping the Broad View

Andrew Cutts

Andrew Cutts, Director of Cyber Security Policy
Department of Homeland Security
October 13, 2009

Abstract:

Cybersecurity is a broad and multi-faceted field. Many people and organizations see individual facets. Cybersecurity leaders within the Department of Homeland Security must be cognizant of many. The DHS Office of Policy, which looks across organizational boundaries, helps to provide them this view. Its role is to help harmonize efforts across component missions, to think broadly and long-term.

Mr. Cutts will talk about that role, discussing a range of cybersecurity policy issues he has dealt with since joining DHS in March of last year.

These include supporting the national cyber initiative, developing cybersecurity strategies, advancing the understanding of national cyber risk, clarifying roles and missions, and helping operational efforts mature.

Bio:

Mr. Cutts joined the Department of Homeland Security in March 2008, working within the Office of Policy as Director for Cyber Security.

Prior to joining DHS, he directed the Cyber Conflict Research Institute at Norwich University Applied Research Institutes. While there, he organized a national research consortium in the field of cyber conflict to perform related research for industry and government, developed Cabinet-level exercises for the Department of Homeland Security, and worked with crisis managers in the finance sector to develop a distributed, scenario-based, computer simulation of securities transactions. While at Norwich University he consulted for the Japanese Cabinet Ministry on cyber threats. He was also on the board of the Cyber Conflict Studies Association, a non-profit entity dedicated to broadening national intellectual capacity in the field of cyber conflict.

From 2002-2004 he was a research program manager at the Institute for Security Technology Studies at Dartmouth College.

He was in the private sector from 1995 to 2002, where he became Vice President for Information Technology at a high-tech engineering services firm based in Connecticut. Before that, he served as a Naval Intelligence Officer for nine years.