Page 9 - FCW, March 2017

$72.7 billion is designated for R&D in the fiscal 2017 defense
appropriations bill
Howard Schmidt, former Obama cyber adviser, dies
Howard Schmidt, who served as Presi- dent Barack Obama’s special assis- tant for cybersecurity from 2009 to 2012 and who recently received the 2016 (ISC)2 Harold F. Tipton Lifetime Achievement Award, passed away on March 2. According to his family, Schmidt had been battling cancer and died at his home in Muskego, Wis.
While serving in the White House, Schmidt developed the National Strate- gy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace program. He most recently served as a partner in Ridge-Schmidt Cyber.
His career in IT and cybersecurity spanned decades as he worked for or served on boards of organizations ranging from eBay and Microsoft to (ISC)2 and the Information Security Forum. He also served as president of the Information Systems Security
Association and founded R & H Secu- rity Consulting.
His long list of government service includes time in the Air
Force and the Arizona
Air National Guard and
stints as a SWAT police officer, head of the FBI’s Computer Exploitation Team and a member of the Computer Crime Investigations Unit in the U.S. Army Reserves.
Schmidt also served
as chief security strate-
gist for the Department of Homeland Security’s US-CERT Partners Program. He won a Federal 100 award in 2003.
Richard Clarke, former special adviser to President George W. Bush for cybersecurity, said in a Facebook
post that the loss had hit him hard. “Howard gave up a lucrative position at Microsoft at my request to join the government as my dep- uty in the White House,” Clarke wrote. “As a mem- ber of the U.S. military, as a police officer, as a corporate official, as an educator, as a White House official and as a strong voice for cyber- security throughout the world, Howard was a selfless patriot. He shall
be sorely missed.”
Schmidt’s family has set up an email
address (schmidtmemorial@gmail. com) for those who wish to share photos or stories.
— Sean D. Carberry
Coming in the April issue of FCW
FCW PERSPECTIVES:
How much can CDM do?
How are deployments of the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation services playing out in agencies across government? FCW gathered CISOs and other cyber experts from DHS, GSA and customer agencies for a deep and candid discussion on CDM to date — see what they had to say!
PERSPECTIVES
March 2017 FCW.COM 9
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