Cybersecurity's New Guard

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Rod Beckström has been tapped to head the National Cyber Security Center. Beckstrom.com

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As one such security consultant noted in an early March presentation to computer-system managers working for defense contractors, power companies, and universities: "What sense does it make to let the enemy know the Air Force has a Cyber Command up and running? Maybe it makes more sense to think as Rod Beckström advocates—dispersing our networks, spreading our response to them around, creating the same kind of uncertainty in their minds about where we are that we have about where they're coming from."

Federal bureaucracies have been struggling for years with hacker intrusions and attempts to manage varying efforts within agencies. But despite new laws and rules, new programs within individual agencies, and a 2003 national "strategy" intended to secure cyberspace, many government networks remain insecure. The General Accountability Office, the investigatory arm of Congress, last October noted that agencies often lack information security on their networks and had not secured data.

"We're simply stalled as a nation when it comes to cybersecurity," says Vic Maconachy, a former top computer science official with the National Security Agency. "We can no longer wait for someone to come along and lead the way."

The impulse for a coordinated fix is now accompanied in some circles by a yearning for a decentralized approach. Cybersecurity specialist Paul Kurtz, a former homeland security and national security official during the Bush and Clinton administrations, is among Beckström's fans.

"Rod can help the government bureaucracy help itself," says Kurtz. "Rather than centralized command and control, Rod brings new thinking about how decentralized organizations can help defend government networks."

Beckström has made no bones about his criticism of the Bush Administration's approach to terrorism. "After 9/11…we took all the different police forces and intelligence forces and put them all under Homeland Security," he noted in a Jan. 1, 2007, interview with The Washington Post. "That was a major centralization move, and typical: When a fairly centralized player gets attacked by a decentralized force, like al Qaeda, the first reaction is to centralize further, and that's usually a strategic mistake." Added Beckström in that interview: "We can centralize our opponents and decentralize our own activity."

A Serial Entrepreneur

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff welcomed Beckström in a brief statement, saying he would help government agencies "implement cyber security strategies in a cohesive way" and improve "situational awareness and information sharing." Chertoff noted Beckström has "unique entrepreneurial and creative business thinking." A Homeland Security spokeswoman says Beckström is currently declining requests for interviews.

Twiki.net, an open-source collaboration platform for businesses, including many blue chip companies, replaced its co-founder with Thomas Barton as interim CEO.

A native Oklahoman, Beckström started his first company at age 24 in a garage apartment. He was attending Stanford Business School at the time, and had previously worked in London for two years as a derivatives trader at Morgan Stanley (MS). By stringing together student and other loans, he created financial software that eventually became CATS Software. The software helped banks estimate the risk of derivatives used as a hedge against losses in currency and interest rates.

Beckström co-founded Mergent Systems, eventually sold to Commerce One, and has been an adviser to venture capitalists. He also serves on boards of African microlender Jamii Bora Trust and the Environmental Defense Fund.

Epstein is a correspondent in BusinessWeek's Washington bureau.