Intellectual Property Law

Former DHS Cybersecurity Head Lands at ICANN

By Kim Zetter

Rod Beckstrom, the government’s former top cybersecurity official who resigned earlier this year to protest the NSA’s efforts to wrestle control of cybersecurity from DHS, has landed a new job as CEO of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

ICANN, an international nonprofit based in the U.S. that oversees the policies and procedures around the internet domain naming conventions, has been embroiled in a number of controversies over the years and marked by internal squabbles.

It’s hoped that Beckstrom will help smooth out some of the organization’s ripples and aid its efforts to address security concerns such as domain name hi-jacking and other issues.

Beckstrom was director of the Department of Homeland Security’s National Cybersecurity Center for less than a year before he resigned last March. Prior to his DHS job, he was largely known as a management theorist, entrepreneur and author, and many criticized DHS at the time for hiring someone with no cyber security experience.

Although Beckstrom also has no experience in the domain name arena, he told the Associated Press his real task at ICANN will be to bring various constituencies together. Beckstrom once helped create a “global peace network” to promote trade and open borders in conflict areas such as the border between India and Pakistan and he told the AP that “If we can help bring peace between two warring nuclear nations, as our network did, we may even have a chance between some of the warring factions in the Internet policy front.”

Photo courtesy Department of Homeland Security

See also:

• Cyber-Security Czar Quits Amid Fears of NSA Takeover

  
  

  Full post as published by Threat Level on June 29, 2009 (boomark / email).

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