Home Appointments Director
Director
CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency)
| Appointee | Jen Easterly |
|---|---|
| Role | Director |
| Organisation | CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) |
| Domain | Intelligence |
| Start | 12 July 2021 |
| End | 20 January 2025 |
| Notes | First woman to lead CISA — cybersecurity of national infrastructure |
Institutional context
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) was established by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Act of 2018, succeeding the National Protection and Programs Directorate within the Department of Homeland Security. The Director leads the agency. Christopher Krebs, the inaugural Director (2018–2020), was the first holder of the office; Easterly is the second, and the first woman.
Career path
Easterly is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and earned a Master of Philosophy in international relations as a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford. She served twenty years in the US Army in military intelligence, with deployments including Iraq and Afghanistan. She was a founding member of US Cyber Command, served on the National Security Council under both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, and held senior counter-terrorism and intelligence-policy roles. After leaving government in 2016 she was head of Morgan Stanley's Cybersecurity Fusion Center.
Appointment
President Biden nominated her in April 2021. The Senate confirmed her on 12 July 2021 by voice vote. She served until 20 January 2025, departing with the change of administration.
Tenure
Three and a half years. Tenure included CISA's response to the Colonial Pipeline ransomware incident, the Log4j vulnerability response, the agency's role in the federal response to election security in 2022 and 2024, and a substantial expansion of CISA's public-private partnership programmes.
Cluster context
Easterly's 2021 appointment is part of the principal cluster on the cybersecurity-and-infrastructure side of the intelligence domain. CISA, having been a new agency in 2018, is structurally distinct from older intelligence services in that female leadership occurred at the institution's second appointee rather than after a multi-decade male history.