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Preston Werntz
Chief Data Officer, Office of Cybersecurity and Communications at U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Ashburn, VA, United States
Details
Experience:
- Published the first CISA Data Strategy identifying the vision and goals for transitioning CISA to a data-informed organization. I engaged CISA senior leadership to gain approval of an Enterprise Data Management Program policy ensuring the importance of data is understood to be an enduring critical function for the agency.
- Coordinated development of an Enterprise Conceptual Data Model (ECDM) to harmonize cybersecurity and infrastructure security concepts across multiple CISA programs and systems. The ECDM improves communication across CISA programs, reduces time to develop new products and services, and enables CISA to better realize the potential value of information.
- Established a Data and Analytics Community of Practice (COP) within CISA to increase knowledge of data science and analytics topics, share ideas, increase networking across the agency, and build out a data culture of collaboration. The COP covers such topics as addressing data warehousing approaches, model drift, preparing training data for AI/ML, and an overview of AutoML tools.
- Communicated CISA’s data governance operating model, data principles, and data culture expectations to all news hires as part of their on-boarding process.
- Developed an Analytics Framework to provide best practices and guidance to identify, prioritize, engineer, and secure analytics. The framework enables analytics to be created and managed in a consistent way to facilitate sharing across CISA programs.
- Conducted the first CISA data asset inventory to improve data discovery and understanding across the agency. As part of the inventory I established mandatory metadata and a series of data standards. - Inventory results are also shared with the DHS Chief Data Officer to increase awareness and data interoperability across the department.
2018 : Present
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Chief Data Officer, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
- Led the Technology Services Section to maintain the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) technology roadmap and introduce new technologies, datasets, tools and systems to support the NCCIC mission. As the chief, managed a staff of eight Federal employees and twenty contractors providing operations support; acquisition support for new systems and solutions; technology planning; technology and pilot development and data integration activities for the NCCIC.
- Led the Automated Indicator Sharing (AIS) initiative which delivers near-real-time machine-to-machine sharing of cyber threat indicators between the private sector and Federal government. Mr. Werntz assembled and led a multidisciplinary team that successfully designed, deployed and accredited a cloud-based machine-to-machine sharing technology which met or beat every established deadline. This was the organization’s first cloud-based solution, so a new technical architecture had to be developed and approved implementing all DHS security requirements.
- Served as the Contracting Officer’s Representative for multiple contracts, including an $8M multi-year Operations and Maintenance effort supporting the NCCIC. During the last contract re-compete, Mr. Werntz identified staffing changes and other cost savings allowing reduction of the overall contract by $3M with minimal impact to operations.
- Co-led a working group supporting Presidential Policy Directive 21 that was tasked with developing a near-real-time cyber and physical situational awareness capability. The working group generated a product and data matrix which tracked information sharing and data flows among Federal departments and agencies, along with a visualization prototype built to assist critical infrastructure owners in accessing and understanding the available data.
2012 : 2018
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Chief, Technology Services Section, National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center
- Led the intra-organizational team tasked with the stand-up of the NCCIC, which is the primary DHS cyber operations center. In leading this effort, Mr. Werntz worked to operationally merge multiple existing watch organizations through relationship building, culture change and creating standard operating procedures. Mr. Werntz also addressed policy issues, technology acquisition and analytic enhancements for the NCCIC. In order to bring the NCCIC together from concept to actual physical watch environment, Mr. Werntz was able to gain consensus on the approach from multiple internal organizations. Mr. Werntz also monitored progress of construction and IT activities making multiple decisions on changes to IT infrastructure and capabilities allowing the center to open four months ahead of schedule.
- Supported the Assistant Secretary and Deputy Assistant Secretary on matters of national cybersecurity and communications strategy and policy. In this role, Mr. Werntz worked many high priority tasks and projects with senior leadership across DHS, other federal departments and agencies, the Department of Defense and the National Security Staff.
- Led DHS efforts for implementation of the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI) number 5, which provides the key means necessary to enable and support shared situational awareness and collaboration across the cyber centers that are responsible for carrying out national cyber activities. In this role, Mr. Werntz helped establish multiple inter-agency working groups to document information sharing best practices, identify shared technology and improve analytic programs across multiple centers.
2009 : 2012
Department of Homeland Security
Senior Strategist for Analysis & Operations, Office of Cybersecurity and Communications
- Project Manager in the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis for a Request for Information tracking system. Duties included overseeing maintenance development, network deployment, training and security accreditation. Led all phases of the software development life cycle.
- Systems Engineering and Technical Assistance (SETA) team member within the Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA) Joint Intelligence Task Force – Combating Terrorism (JITF-CT) IT Program Management Office. Duties included managing large integration projects by overseeing multiple contractors, working as liaison between different DIA elements and guiding projects from requirements identification through final security accreditation. Served as liaison to the NCTC Chief Information Officer working on data sharing, web service interfaces and technology collaboration.
- Participated on the DNI's A-Space program building a metrics dashboard (capturing relevant user and system activity) using Oracle's Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. Coordinated with the development team to properly capture required metrics while working with the documentation and security accreditation group to get the Oracle component approved for usage.
- Supported the DNI's Open Source Center (OSC) on the Large Scale Internet Exploitation project building XML web services using the Mark Logic XML Content Server, creating a Java based visualization tool and interfacing Mark Logic data with MetaCarta. Worked with analysts to define requirements and prepare presentations (on visualization and entity extraction issues).
- Created prototypes and applications for the National Reconnaissance Office’s (NRO) Ground Enterprise Directorate using Java and open source technologies.
- Worked as a Microsoft .NET developer for the National Security Agency (NSA) contributing to several custom applications for SIGINT analysts.
2004 : 2009
Newbrook Solutions, Inc.
Vice President / Co-Founder
- System Architect working in DIA’s Directorate for HUMINT creating web based applications with Java web technologies (Struts application framework), XML and Sybase. Assisted managing a team of twelve developers spread between three different contractors and facilitated design reviews across the groups.
- System Architect for DIA's JITF-CT on multiple projects, including migration of the classified Combating Terrorism Database and Combating Terrorism Knowledge Base. Used the Scrum Agile Project Management process to deliver functionality to the analysts using incremental and iterative development cycles. Hired ten developers and implemented source code management and defect tracking best practices within the project.
- Led the development team for the Joint Regional Information Exchange System (JRIES) information sharing program which was a web-based collaborative and database environment between federal and local law enforcement (DIA JITF-CT, California CTC and NYPD CT). JRIES consisted of a Microsoft Share Point portal, several ASP.NET applications, Microsoft SQL Server, ESRI and the Groove workspace for collaboration.
- Supported Microsoft’s Federal Consulting Services at several different government agencies including the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), Office for Naval Intelligence (ONI) and US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) writing ASP web applications using Visual Basic middle-tier business objects, Microsoft BizTalk, Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle. All engagements required extensive security architecture and design to mesh those products and applications into different agencies existing networks and products.
1997 : 2004
ManTech IS&T
Systems Architect
- Coordinated development of an Enterprise Conceptual Data Model (ECDM) to harmonize cybersecurity and infrastructure security concepts across multiple CISA programs and systems. The ECDM improves communication across CISA programs, reduces time to develop new products and services, and enables CISA to better realize the potential value of information.
- Established a Data and Analytics Community of Practice (COP) within CISA to increase knowledge of data science and analytics topics, share ideas, increase networking across the agency, and build out a data culture of collaboration. The COP covers such topics as addressing data warehousing approaches, model drift, preparing training data for AI/ML, and an overview of AutoML tools.
- Communicated CISA’s data governance operating model, data principles, and data culture expectations to all news hires as part of their on-boarding process.
- Developed an Analytics Framework to provide best practices and guidance to identify, prioritize, engineer, and secure analytics. The framework enables analytics to be created and managed in a consistent way to facilitate sharing across CISA programs.
- Conducted the first CISA data asset inventory to improve data discovery and understanding across the agency. As part of the inventory I established mandatory metadata and a series of data standards. - Inventory results are also shared with the DHS Chief Data Officer to increase awareness and data interoperability across the department.
2018 : Present
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Chief Data Officer, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
- Led the Technology Services Section to maintain the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) technology roadmap and introduce new technologies, datasets, tools and systems to support the NCCIC mission. As the chief, managed a staff of eight Federal employees and twenty contractors providing operations support; acquisition support for new systems and solutions; technology planning; technology and pilot development and data integration activities for the NCCIC.
- Led the Automated Indicator Sharing (AIS) initiative which delivers near-real-time machine-to-machine sharing of cyber threat indicators between the private sector and Federal government. Mr. Werntz assembled and led a multidisciplinary team that successfully designed, deployed and accredited a cloud-based machine-to-machine sharing technology which met or beat every established deadline. This was the organization’s first cloud-based solution, so a new technical architecture had to be developed and approved implementing all DHS security requirements.
- Served as the Contracting Officer’s Representative for multiple contracts, including an $8M multi-year Operations and Maintenance effort supporting the NCCIC. During the last contract re-compete, Mr. Werntz identified staffing changes and other cost savings allowing reduction of the overall contract by $3M with minimal impact to operations.
- Co-led a working group supporting Presidential Policy Directive 21 that was tasked with developing a near-real-time cyber and physical situational awareness capability. The working group generated a product and data matrix which tracked information sharing and data flows among Federal departments and agencies, along with a visualization prototype built to assist critical infrastructure owners in accessing and understanding the available data.
2012 : 2018
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Chief, Technology Services Section, National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center
- Led the intra-organizational team tasked with the stand-up of the NCCIC, which is the primary DHS cyber operations center. In leading this effort, Mr. Werntz worked to operationally merge multiple existing watch organizations through relationship building, culture change and creating standard operating procedures. Mr. Werntz also addressed policy issues, technology acquisition and analytic enhancements for the NCCIC. In order to bring the NCCIC together from concept to actual physical watch environment, Mr. Werntz was able to gain consensus on the approach from multiple internal organizations. Mr. Werntz also monitored progress of construction and IT activities making multiple decisions on changes to IT infrastructure and capabilities allowing the center to open four months ahead of schedule.
- Supported the Assistant Secretary and Deputy Assistant Secretary on matters of national cybersecurity and communications strategy and policy. In this role, Mr. Werntz worked many high priority tasks and projects with senior leadership across DHS, other federal departments and agencies, the Department of Defense and the National Security Staff.
- Led DHS efforts for implementation of the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI) number 5, which provides the key means necessary to enable and support shared situational awareness and collaboration across the cyber centers that are responsible for carrying out national cyber activities. In this role, Mr. Werntz helped establish multiple inter-agency working groups to document information sharing best practices, identify shared technology and improve analytic programs across multiple centers.
2009 : 2012
Department of Homeland Security
Senior Strategist for Analysis & Operations, Office of Cybersecurity and Communications
- Project Manager in the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis for a Request for Information tracking system. Duties included overseeing maintenance development, network deployment, training and security accreditation. Led all phases of the software development life cycle.
- Systems Engineering and Technical Assistance (SETA) team member within the Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA) Joint Intelligence Task Force – Combating Terrorism (JITF-CT) IT Program Management Office. Duties included managing large integration projects by overseeing multiple contractors, working as liaison between different DIA elements and guiding projects from requirements identification through final security accreditation. Served as liaison to the NCTC Chief Information Officer working on data sharing, web service interfaces and technology collaboration.
- Participated on the DNI's A-Space program building a metrics dashboard (capturing relevant user and system activity) using Oracle's Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. Coordinated with the development team to properly capture required metrics while working with the documentation and security accreditation group to get the Oracle component approved for usage.
- Supported the DNI's Open Source Center (OSC) on the Large Scale Internet Exploitation project building XML web services using the Mark Logic XML Content Server, creating a Java based visualization tool and interfacing Mark Logic data with MetaCarta. Worked with analysts to define requirements and prepare presentations (on visualization and entity extraction issues).
- Created prototypes and applications for the National Reconnaissance Office’s (NRO) Ground Enterprise Directorate using Java and open source technologies.
- Worked as a Microsoft .NET developer for the National Security Agency (NSA) contributing to several custom applications for SIGINT analysts.
2004 : 2009
Newbrook Solutions, Inc.
Vice President / Co-Founder
- System Architect working in DIA’s Directorate for HUMINT creating web based applications with Java web technologies (Struts application framework), XML and Sybase. Assisted managing a team of twelve developers spread between three different contractors and facilitated design reviews across the groups.
- System Architect for DIA's JITF-CT on multiple projects, including migration of the classified Combating Terrorism Database and Combating Terrorism Knowledge Base. Used the Scrum Agile Project Management process to deliver functionality to the analysts using incremental and iterative development cycles. Hired ten developers and implemented source code management and defect tracking best practices within the project.
- Led the development team for the Joint Regional Information Exchange System (JRIES) information sharing program which was a web-based collaborative and database environment between federal and local law enforcement (DIA JITF-CT, California CTC and NYPD CT). JRIES consisted of a Microsoft Share Point portal, several ASP.NET applications, Microsoft SQL Server, ESRI and the Groove workspace for collaboration.
- Supported Microsoft’s Federal Consulting Services at several different government agencies including the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), Office for Naval Intelligence (ONI) and US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) writing ASP web applications using Visual Basic middle-tier business objects, Microsoft BizTalk, Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle. All engagements required extensive security architecture and design to mesh those products and applications into different agencies existing networks and products.
1997 : 2004
ManTech IS&T
Systems Architect
Company:
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
About
- SES Executive Core Qualifications (ECQs) certified by OPM (July 2019).
- Experienced technologist, cybersecurity strategist, and data evangelist in the Department of Homeland Security with a record of completing large, complex projects advancing the Department’s goal to secure cyberspace and critical infrastructure.
- I controlled the design, development, and deployment of the first machine-to-machine cyber threat indicator sharing capability between the Federal government and the private sector and organized the stand-up of the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center.
- As a leader I inspire, empower, and support others in bringing their ideas to action.
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