Mike Witt
SAISO and CISO for Cybersecurity & Privacy
Mike Witt is NASA’s Senior Agency Information Security Officer (SAISO) and Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) for Cybersecurity and Privacy. Mike also serves as the co-chair for the FISMA Metrics Subcommittee and co-chair for the IoT Working Group, under the purview of the Federal CIO Council. He also serves as a member on the Department of Homeland Security’s Shared Services Customer Advisory Board.
Prior to NASA, he served with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and he held multiple roles at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) including Director, Computer Security Incident Response Center, where he was responsible for the agency’s incident handling, analysis, and vulnerability management. While at the IRS, he was detailed by the Federal CIO to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) during its initial formation as their interim Chief Information Security Officer to develop and implement the cybersecurity program for this newly created agency.
Before joining the IRS, Mike served as the Director, United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) within DHS. There he also played a pivotal role in securing federal agencies with the creation of the EINSTEIN Program, Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) initiative, NIST Special Publication 800-61 Rev 1, National Security Presidential Directive 54 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 23 that established and standardized the baseline of the U.S. Government’s cyber infrastructure and incident response processes.
Mike has worked for the federal government for more than 30 years, which includes 10 years of military experience with the United States Army providing information systems and technology support to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Defense Information Systems Agency, and various Army commands. He is a recipient of the NASA Silver Achievement Medal, IRS CTO Medal, Federal CIO Council Leadership Award, CDO Magazine Top Federal CISO Award, FedScoop Cybersecurity Leader of the Year Award, and CyberScoop Government Leadership Award.