He’s the third official to helm the Office of the National Cyber Director, which was stood up in the early days of the Biden administration as an interlocutor for cyber policy, steering discussions between Congress, the Pentagon and the intelligence community.
Coker — who has helped oversee multiple domestic cyber initiatives, like workforce development, regulatory harmonization and memory-safe programming — laid out a case on Tuesday for the incoming president: We need to up our game.
“There’s so many challenges that the nation has to take on. Open up the papers nowaday, you read about pre-positioning on our critical infrastructure [and] our telecommunications systems being compromised,” he told reporters on the sidelines of a talk at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a national security think tank in Washington, D.C.. “We have a lot of work to do. I can’t sugar coat that.”
Coker delivered a speech that outlined the work his office has done in the U.S. cyber policy world over the past few years and said during a fireside chat that he wishes in the future for ONCD to have more say in the federal government’s cybersecurity spending.
“It’s good to give budget guidance. We need to give budget direction when it comes to cybersecurity,” he said. “I would love for the incoming administration, or any administration, to recognize the priority of cybersecurity. It’s a responsibility that every department and agency needs to stand up to. We need to give more than guidance when it comes to cybersecurity budgets.”
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