The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency will have a new lead official charged with coordinating the agency’s election security efforts.
Caitlin Conley, who serves as a senior advisor to Director Jen Easterly, will be taking on “additional responsibilities” that include “spearhead[ing] CISA’s partnership, engagement and coordination efforts with election officials across the nation.”
Conley, a former U.S. Army operations officer, joined CISA in April after a two-year stint on the White House National Security Council. She previously worked as executive director for the Defending Digital Democracy Project at Harvard University and the Belfer Center, which researches strategies, tools and technologies that can protect elections from cyber attacks, disinformation and other threats that seek to undermine confidence in democratic processes and systems.
According to the center, Conley’s work included meeting with secretaries of state and other election officials to learn about vulnerabilities in election systems, running tabletop exercises on election threats leading up to 2020, and organizing a cross-disciplinary team of Harvard and MIT students, technology vendors and policy specialists to build new tools for election officials to defend against cyber attacks and disinformation campaigns.
“Cait is a dedicated public servant and combat-tested U.S. Army veteran with extensive operational and leadership experience working top national security priorities, including cybersecurity and counterterrorism,” Easterly said in a statement announcing the moves. “This experience, combined with her work leading the bipartisan Defending Digital Democracy Project, make her ideally suited to help those state and local officials carrying out elections in every community in America.”
At the same time, the agency announced that Kim Wyman, who has been the agency’s senior election security lead since 2021, will be leaving at the end of July for a job in the private sector.
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