Rear Admiral Jason Tama
Commander, Coast Guard Cyber Command
Jason Tama earned a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and a master of engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. He also received a master’s from Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management.
He served as deputy chief of the service’s Office of Budget and Programs and later budget coordinator. He was chief of the Prevention Department in San Francisco, chief of Waterways Management in Puget Sound. He was also captain of the Port of New York and New Jersey.
Tama served on the White House National Security Council and then Executive Assistant to the Vice Commandant before assuming his current role as commander of Coast Guard Cyber Command in 2024.
In the News…
Coast Guard officials are implementing new risk management strategies for Chinese-made ship-to-shore cranes. The service recently released the Maritime Security directive to address the risk of China remotely accessing the equipment and gathering intelligence.
The notice stated that the cranes can be “controlled, serviced, and programmed from remote locations, and those features potentially leave STS cranes vulnerable to exploitation, threatening the maritime elements of the national transportation system.“
The Coast Guard developed the directive with input from the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security as well as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. President Biden issued an executive order back in February to address cyber threats to the nation’s Maritime Transportation System.
