White House Selects Cybersecurity Chief

The White House has chosen an industry information security specialist as its cybersecurity chief, an official said Monday, filling a job that has had no permanent director for a year.

Greg Garcia will be nominated later this week as the Department of Homeland Security’s assistant secretary for cybersecurity and telecommunications, said a department official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement had not yet been made. He will replace acting cybersecurity director Donald “Andy” Purdy Jr., who is a two-year contract employee on loan from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

The cybersecurity job was created in July 2005, but department officials have struggled to find candidates willing to take significant pay cuts from industry jobs to fill it.