The U.S. Census Bureau has named Beau Houser chief information security officer (CISO). Houser had been CISO at the Small Business Administration since Oct. 2017.
The Census Bureau confirmed to MeriTalk that Houser will begin his new position on Sept. 15. The Census Bureau has been without a CISO for nearly a year after Tim Ruland retired in September 2018.
Houser joins the bureau as it prepares to kick off of the Decennial Census, and as it deals with some cybersecurity concerns. In June of this year, a Department of Commerce inspector general report found that the Census Bureau failed to implement security baselines and basic security practices for cloud-based systems, leading to “severe risks to 2020 Census cloud environments.”
During a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing in July, the director of the Census Bureau and officials with the Government Accountability Office maintained that progress was being made to ensure the integrity of the bureau’s IT security posture.
