Jen Easterly, the Agency’s stalwart champion of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security and a figurehead among cybersecurity and intelligence community practitioners, will leave her post on January 20 next year when President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated back to the House White, people familiar with her plans said. .

The plans were communicated through internal emails and a staff meeting, said the people, who asked not to be identified to share news of her departure. Deputy director Nitin Natarajan plans to leave at that time, one of the people said.

Easterly graduated from West Point in 1990 and later earned a master’s degree at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. She then began a 20-year career in the US Army. She was instrumental as one of the top four officials who helped establish the US Cyber ​​Command, the combatant command born out of a 2008 Defense Department malware infestation that appeared on a USB drive, which resulted in a duration of 14 months. cleaning operation nicknamed Buckshot Yankee.

After retiring as a lieutenant colonel, Easterly continued his government service as the NSA’s deputy director for counterterrorism and then as the senior director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council under President Obama. She later moved into the private sector, where she served as Morgan Stanley’s Global Head of Cyber ​​Security.

She was confirmed as CISA director after an eight-month post-Trump vacancy DRAWING Chris Krebs, the agency’s first director, when Krebs declared that the 2020 presidential election was fair and secure.

A CISA spokesperson said Nextgov/FCW that all appointees from the current administration vacate their positions when a new administration takes office and affirmed the agency’s commitment to a smooth transition.

Over time, Easterly supported CISA’s Secure by Design initiatives, which focused on persuading private sector manufacturers to build default security standards into their products and point-of-sale offerings as part of a larger government effort to push software manufacturers to take the security of their products more seriously.

She led the agency amid a series of major cyberattacks targeting the U.S. government, including one involving Chinese hackers who accessed the inboxes of top U.S. officials who later attracted attention of a DHS-backed cybersecurity assessment panel. During national election cycles, she has served as a steady voice, specifically stating in this year’s presidential election that there was “no evidence of any malicious activity that materially impacted the security or integrity of our election infrastructure “.

Under her leadership, and CISA guidance released on emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and quantum information sciences to help entities transition their encryption systems to a quantum-resistant standard before the creation of a fault-tolerant quantum computer.

It is common for senior officials to leave their posts in a presidential transition, although some tech and cyber officials in the Biden administration he already left both before and after the elections.

CISA’s future in a future Trump administration remains uncertain, as GOP accusations of censorship stemming from CISA’s interactions with social media companies — claims Easterly has adamantly denied — have played a role. prominent role in a recent Supreme Court case that the Biden administration ultimately won.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a staunch critic of CISA who has supported these censorship charges, is also next in line to lead the top position on the Senate Homeland Security Committee. Last year, Paul blocked efforts to renew CISA’s chemical security checks after they expire in July 2023.

Moreover, Trump’s proposed budget cuts to agencies have raised concerns about whether government networks will receive adequate funding for cybersecurity. Nextgov/FCW previous reported.

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose is being taken into account to lead the agency after Easterly’s departure, Politico reported last week, citing four people who spoke to those in his orbit.