Executive Mosaic is honored to introduce Phyllis Schneck, deputy undersecretary for cybersecurity and communications at the Department of Homeland Security, as the newest inductee into the Wash100 — a group of influential leaders in the government contracting arena.

Schneck heads DHS’ cyber and communications programs under the National Protection and Programs Directorate and serves as the department’s chief cybersecurity official.

Her office has collaborated with the National Institute of Standards and Technology on a voluntary program for the private sector to engage in the efforts against cyber threats.

Last year, she also welcomed legislation to enable the CS&C integration center to share threat data and incident response reports with companies and other agencies.

Also on Schneck’s agenda is the utilization of big data and predictive analytics in a DHS cyber tool modeled after the National Weather Service‘s maps for climate prediction.

“Our goal for networks for connected devices is to know when to, in real-time, just reject incoming traffic — much of which carries the malware these days — due to its current behavior,” she said.

Schneck’s career also includes time at McAfee, Mitre, Computer Sciences Corp., IBM and NASA‘s Goddard Space Flight Center.

She has also held leadership roles for the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ cybersecurity commission for the 44th presidency, National Cyber Forensics and Training Alliance, NIST’s information security and privacy advisory board and FBI‘s InfraGard program.

Executive Mosaic congratulates Phyllis Schneck and the DHS team for their selection to receive this award.