Jeff Eisensmith
Department of Homeland Security (Retired)
Retired April 2018
Department of Homeland Security CISO 2013 – 2018
As the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) for the Department of Homeland Security, Mr. Eisensmith lead through collaboration with the DHS CISO Council, a body of Component CISOs. Mr. Eisensmith worked to mature policies and strengthen the information security posture of the department—setting vision and strategy while maintaining compliance with the Federal Information Security Modernization Act of 2014. He slao served as co-chair for the Joint Continuous Monitoring Working Group, sponsored by the DHS CIO Council.
Mr. Eisensmith came to DHS Headquarters from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) where he served as the ICE CISO and acting Engineering Division Director. Prior to his work at ICE he was Director of Technical Operations for BAE Systems. Before that Jeff held several roles within the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He brings experience from both offensive and defensive information operations, as well as contract management experience from government and contractor perspectives.
Jeff started his government career after he graduated from Rutgers University in 1985 with a degree in Engineering Physics. He went to work for the FBI as an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designer tasked with reducing the physical size of many of their audio and video collection systems. During that time Jeff was detailed to Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as a project manager on several of the contracts that involved ASIC development technologies. His DARPA DefenseNet account was his first introduction to the early Internet. Jeff was later drafted into the FBI’s Advanced Telephony Intercept Unit where he developed the ability to intercept transmissions on networks like DefenseNet. For the next five years, Jeff pursued Internet intercepts for the FBI. He finished his FBI career as a Unit Chief developing advanced data mining and visualization prototype systems.
While working with the FBI Jeff was nominated, and selected to attend, the National Defense University’s Advanced Management Program (Class 22) where he received his DoD Chief Information Officer certification; graduated from James Madison University with a Master of Science degree in computer science from the NSA certified Information Assurance Program; and attained Certified In-formation Systems Security Professional and Project Management Professional certifications.
