National Security Council

Feds@Work: A Critical Role In Weapons Disposal

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This is one in a series of profiles on the 2012 Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal finalists. The awards, presented by the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, recognize outstanding federal employees whose important, behind-the-scenes work is advancing the health, safety and well-being of Americans and are among the most prestigious honors given to civil servants. This profile features a finalist for the National Security and International Affairs medal, Joyce Connery, director for Nuclear Energy Policy at the National Security Council in Washington, D.C.

A summit of 50 world leaders hosted by President Obama in 2010 resulted in important steps to prevent terrorists from obtaining nuclear materials such as plutonium and highly enriched uranium that could be used to make radiological bombs. Keep reading →

 /  Published September 7, 2012 at 11:00 AM

Resiliency: The Future of Global Cyber Power

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2011 could very well be called “Year of the Cyber Attack” given the thousands of reported and unreported hacking events. There is no doubt cyber threats facing governments and companies have certainly increased, but they’ve been met by host of powerful new ways to respond to them. Like a sickness to the body, industry and government have been working hard to build immunity with varying degrees of success.

Virtualization and cloud strategies now allow large and small companies to manage their data architecture with a flexibility that was impossible a few years ago. New collaboration software allows them to share documents more reliably on secure storage spaces. Modern data centers allow them to make their data continuously available to those who should have access to it, and invisible to those who don’t. The exponential growth of mobile devices drives an exponential growth in security risks. Keep reading →

 /  Published January 18, 2012 at 11:02 AM

Feds@Work: Building Business And National Security

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Since the end of the Cold War more than 20 years ago, senior civilian and military leaders, our allies and the business community have criticized the nation’s export control system as being unnecessarily cumbersome and counterproductive. Instead of benefiting American interests, they said, it has done a poor job protecting sensitive technology while blocking U.S. manufacturers from legitimately selling less vital products to buyers overseas.

Brian Nilsson, a Commerce Department employee on detail to the White House, accomplished what many had tried and failed to do in the past-he brought together stakeholders with entrenched interests to design and begin implementing a new system that will more effectively protect our national security and help American businesses compete in the global marketplace. Keep reading →

 /  Published January 11, 2012 at 8:25 AM