Sean Plankey picked by Trump to be CISA director

Plankey’s nomination fills the biggest remaining gap among cyber leaders in the second Trump administration.

President Donald Trump nominated Sean Plankey to head the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on Tuesday, the last major piece to fall into place for cybersecurity leadership in his administration.

Plankey served in the first Trump administration, holding a few posts with cyber responsibilities. He was the principal deputy assistant secretary for the Energy Department’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergency Response in 2019 and 2020. Before that he was director of cyber policy at the National Security Council, starting in 2018. He also was the chief information officer for the Navy.

He most recently had been at the global cybersecurity advisory company WTW.

He also served in several government positions prior to the first Trump administration. He was a Coast Guard man, rising to the post of deputy division chief. He served in Afghanistan, and worked in Cyber Command.

He was briefly under consideration in 2020 to lead the agency he’s now nominated to be director of, after Trump forced Chris Krebs out of the role. He had long been thought to be Trump’s pick this time around, too.

His nomination will now be moved before the Senate Homeland Security Committee. If confirmed, he would inherit an agency under new pressure in the Trump administration, with some of its responsibilities curtailed and some of its personnel eliminated.

He also would have at least one key deputy, with Karen Evans already in place as executive assistant director for cybersecurity at CISA.

Among other key members of the Trump cyber team, Sean Cairncross is also awaiting Senate consideration of his nomination for national cyber director. Alexei Bulazel holds the position of director of cyber policy at the NSC.

Government

• FBI officials say AI is bolstering adversaries, emphasizing need to focus on cyber basics, patching

• CIA’s Michael Ellis says cyber intelligence is changing how the agency operates

• The G7 tells industry to hurry up and prep for post-quantum encryption

• Jail time for Maine child in 764 marks turning point in federal law enforcement

Technology

• European parliament members call for slowdown of Serbia’s EU entry over spyware use

• FCC proposes public scorecard to rate telecoms on anti-robocall efforts

• Pegasus, NoviSpy variant spyware found on devices of Serbian activists

• Wyden seeks upgraded NSA security guidance on commercial VPN use

Threats

• Chinese espionage groups swarm to exploit triple-link chain of zero-days

• Microsoft discloses two actively exploited zero-days among 974 vulnerabilities

• Russian national extradited to US for alleged involvement in bank-account takeover scheme

• Attackers exploit zero-days in consistently besieged SonicWall product

Policy

• Whistleblower says USPS deploying new, ‘untested’ IT systems governing mail-in ballots

• Former sexual abuse victims say Grok used their images, videos to train deepfake capabilities

• Cyber threats nudge Trump to sign executive order on foreign equipment in U.S. energy infrastructure

• Election official says Tina Peters would be consultant, won’t have access to election systems