HHS Taps Navy Veteran as New CISO

Navy veteran Christopher Wlaschin has been appointed chief information security officer (CISO) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), CyberScoop reported last week.

According to the Jan. 26 article, “Christopher Wlaschin retired after 28 years in the Navy in 2008 as a lieutenant commander and has held a variety of civilian jobs since, including several stints at major healthcare companies in his home state. He came to HHS from the Nebraska-based, for-profit National Research Corporation, where he was senior director for information security and infrastructure for NRC Health.”

Wlaschin has held the position at HHS since Jan. 9. According to CyberScoop, “The HHS position is a career civil service appointment. Wlaschin got in under the wire of the new administration’s hiring freeze—which affects all current vacancies and any new hires with a start date after Feb. 22—but said his office has 30 open cybersecurity positions that might be frozen.”

Previously, Wlaschin was with the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, where he was associate deputy assistant secretary for security operations for one year beginning in August 2012. He joined VA from Military Sealift Command, where he was the civilian CIO from 2010 until 2012.

“As a member of the U.S. government’s Senior Executive Service … Wlaschin will lead the cybersecurity program across HHS, with a goal to foster an enterprise-wide secure and trusted environment in support of HHS’ commitment to better health and well-being of the American people,” the department said in a statement, as reported by CyberScoop.

Wlaschin’s predecessor at HHS, Sara Hall, recently left the agency. Hall is now the head of privacy and information security at Human Longevity, Inc.