Brandon Wales
Acting Director, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
Brandon D. Wales earned an undergraduate degree from George Washington University and an MA from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He was a senior associate at a Washington-based foreign policy and national security think-tank.
He served as a national security advisor to Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, and then joined the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He was tasked with managing the Homeland Infrastructure Threat and Risk Analysis Center.
For two years during President Trump’s administration, he served as a senior counselor to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. He was designated by President Donald Trump as the acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in November 2020, and continues in that position.
In the News…
SolarWinds hackers who attacked federal government networks last year—one of the largest cybersecurity incidents in U.S. history—may have been stopped or minimized if basic security measures had been in place, according to Brandon Wales, acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Acting Director Wales wrote to Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, saying the senator was right to question if firewalls placed in victim agency systems could have helped block the hardware virus. “CISA agrees that a firewall blocking all outgoing connections to the internet would have neutralized the malware,” the acting director stated.
The agency “did observe victim networks with this configuration that successfully blocked connection attempts and had no follow-on exploitation, the effectiveness of this preventative measure is not applicable to all types of intrusions and may not be feasible given operational requirements for some agencies,” he added.
Acting Director Wales said CISA doesn’t have numbers on how many federal agencies were segmenting and segregating their networks, a key security guideline the agency has long recommended as a way to prevent hackers from moving through sensitive networks.
Contact this Leader…
Did you pray for Acting Director Wales today? You can let him know at:
The Honorable Brandon Wales, Acting Director
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
Department of Homeland Security
245 Murray Lane
Washington, DC 20528
