Grant Gross
Senior Writer

Reports: U.S. to name head of new cybersecurity center

news
Mar 20, 20082 mins

Tech entrepreneur Rod Beckstrom reportedly will be named to run a new National Cyber Security Center at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Tech entrepreneur and author Rod Beckstrom will be named to run a new National Cyber Security Center at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, according to news reports.

Beckstrom, founder of Cats Software and co-founder of Twiki.net, a company offering an open source wiki software system, would head the center, created by President George Bush in a January directive, according to reports in The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. The Bush administration has largely been silent about the cybersecurity center.

In addition to founding a handful of tech companies and nonprofit groups, Beckstrom is co-author of the book, “The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations,” which praises the nimbleness of decentralized organizations. Beckstrom has suggested the U.S. government could better fight terrorist groups by taking a more decentralized approach, including using outsourcing and deploying more autonomous special operations units on the battlefield.

Beckstrom would reportedly report directly to DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff. Chertoff, in September 2006, appointed Greg Garcia, the former vice president for information security policy and programs at the Information Technology Association of America, as DHS assistant secretary for cybersecurity and telecommunications. Garcia reports to a DHS undersecretary.

An official announcement about Beckstrom’s appointment could come as soon as Thursday.

Grant Gross

Grant Gross, a senior writer at CIO, is a long-time IT journalist who has focused on AI, enterprise technology, and tech policy. He previously served as Washington, D.C., correspondent and later senior editor at IDG News Service. Earlier in his career, he was managing editor at Linux.com and news editor at tech careers site Techies.com. As a tech policy expert, he has appeared on C-SPAN and the giant NTN24 Spanish-language cable news network. In the distant past, he worked as a reporter and editor at newspapers in Minnesota and the Dakotas. A finalist for Best Range of Work by a Single Author for both the Eddie Awards and the Neal Awards, Grant was recently recognized with an ASBPE Regional Silver award for his article “Agentic AI: Decisive, operational AI arrives in business.”

More from this author