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W. Hord Tipton: Walking the Talk

This is from the May 19th update at EnterpriseLeadership.

W. Hord Tipton
Former CIO, U.S. Department of the Interior

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When Hord Tipton became CIO of the U.S. Dept. of Interior, he knew he would be wrestling with some daunting IT issues, especially in security. In fact, the Department was reeling from a December 2001 court order that disconnected all Interior systems from the Internet. That order resulted in a multi-million lawsuit brought by beneficiaries of Individual Indian Trust accounts held by the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs, based in part on hackers burrowing into the Trust's accounts.

By making a good case for business systems security, Tipton managed to convince the Interior's officials to increase the $4 million annual IT network and security budget to $100 million. Tipton and his staff spent the next four years upgrading systems security and getting all of the Interior's systems reconnected to the Internet. Tipton even gave his IT staff one year to become certified in security. When he received a lot of staff resistance to his challenge, the 60-year-old Tipton did something unusual for a CIO: He became a Certified Information Systems Security Professional. This certification matched the job at hand.

Under Tipton's leadership, the U.S. Dept. of the Interior established sound IT security policies and guidelines, and initiated testing and IT security training programs throughout the agency. Now retired from government service, Tipton is a board member of ISC2, the organization that oversees the CISSP exam and maintains the credentialing process.