National Cyber Security Division

The National Cyber Security Division (NCSD) is a division of the Office of Cyber Security & Communications, within the United States Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Formed from the Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office, the National Infrastructure Protection Center, the Federal Computer Incident Response Center, and the National Communications System, NCSD opened on June 6, 2003. The NCSD mission is to collaborate with the private sector, government, military, and intelligence stakeholders to conduct risk assessments and mitigate vulnerabilities and threats to information technology assets and activities affecting the operation of the civilian government and private sector critical cyber infrastructures. NCSD also provides cyber threat and vulnerability analysis, early warning, and incident response assistance for public and private sector constituents. NCSD carries out the majority of DHS’ responsibilities under the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative. The FY 2011 budget request for NCSD is $378.744 million and includes 342 federal positions. The current director of the NCSD is John Streufert, former chief information security officer (CISO) for the United States Department of State, who assumed the position in January 2012.
Strategic objectives and priorities.
Strategic Objectives
To protect the cyber infrastructure, NCSD has identified two overarching objectives:
Priorities
Organization.
NCSD is funded through the following three Congressionally appropriated Programs, Projects and Activities (PPA): United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), Strategic Initiatives, and Outreach and Programs:
Early leadership turnover.
NCSD has been plagued by leadership problems, having had multiple directors that resign after serving only short terms, or potential candidates for the position of director who refuse the position. As chair of the pre-existing Counter-terrorism Security Group, Richard Clarke was initially offered the position of director of the NCSD, but refused citing concerns that there would be too many bureaucratic layers between him and Homeland Security director Tom Ridge. Robert Liscouski ran the division initially while a permanent director was sought and continued on as Assistant Director until February 2005. Amit Yoran became director of NCSD in September 2003 and helped set up the division, but after only a year in the job, left abruptly in October 2004. One of the division's deputy directors, Andy Purdy, assumed the position of interim director within a week of Yoran's departure. In 2006 upon Andy Purdy's departure Jerry Dixon took on the role as acting director in December 2006 until officially appointed to the position as executive director in January 2007. Upon Dixon's departure in September 2007 Mcguire took on the role of acting director until March 2008 which the USSS assigned Cornelius Tate to be the current director of NCSD.
An audit of the division, conducted by DHS's inspector general Clark Kent Ervin, cast a negative view on the division's first year. Although the report praised the formation of the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) and the National Cyber Alert System, the division received criticism for failing to set priorities, develop strategic plans and provide effective leadership in cyber security issues.