CyberWire Daily - Encore: Richard Clarke: From presidential inspiration to cybersecurity policy pioneer. [Policy] [Career Notes]

Episode Date: July 7, 2024

CEO and consultant Richard Clarke took his inspiration from President John F Kennedy and turned it into the first cybersecurity position in federal government. Determined to help change the mindset of war, Richard went to work for the Department of Defense at the Pentagon following college during the Vietnam War. From Assistant Secretary of the State Department, he moved to the White House to work for President George W. Bush's administration where he kept an eye on Al-Qaeda and was tasked to take on cybersecurity. Lacking any books or courses to give him a basic understanding of cybersecurity, Richard made it his mission to raise the level of cybersecurity knowledge. Currently as Chairman and CEO at Good Harbor Security Risk Management, Richard advises CISOs. We thank Richard for sharing his story with us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I grew up at a time when John Kennedy was president, and his call to ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country resonated a lot with me. And so I think from the very beginning, I wanted to serve in government, to serve in the federal government. I remember going to the White House as a kid, standing outside and saying to my father, I'm going to work there. and saying to my father, I'm going to work there. Well, when I got out of school, the Vietnam War was still raging. It was the number one issue that had dominated my life as an undergraduate. And I made a counterintuitive response to that. I decided I wanted to go work in the Pentagon.

My reason for thinking that way was, if only people who wanted to have wars, if they were the people who populated the Pentagon, then we would always have more wars. But if we had people who believed in alternatives to war, it might make a difference 20 years later. And so I put my sights on the Pentagon and I lucked out. I got a management trainee job, management internship job in the office of the Secretary of Defense. I got to the White House from the State Department. I'd been an assistant secretary.

So I went to the White House at a fairly high level in the Bush administration. Almost from the beginning, I thought we were not paying enough attention to a new phenomenon that I smelled, I detected, and some other people did too. And that phenomenon turned out to have a name, and that name was Al-Qaeda. So I always kept Al-Qaeda under watch, beginning, oh, probably in 1992. In 1997, they added to my portfolio

this new thing called cybersecurity. And when they insisted I take it on as an additional responsibility, I tried to learn about it, tried to get books on the subject. And there really were not any good books then that were an introduction to the topic. And so I used the fact that I was a special assistant to the president to call up Microsoft and Cisco and

Symantec and the big names of the day and say, I'm from the White House. I really need to understand your company in this issue. So I want to meet with Bill Gates. I want to meet with John Chambers. And that worked. Before 9-11, in the early months of the Bush administration, Bush 2, it was pretty clear to me that they were not going to pay enough attention to al-Qaeda. And I really didn't want to be left holding the bag. And I also wanted there to be a full-time position worrying about cybersecurity. So I think in June, before the September attacks, I went to the National Security Advisor and said,

I want to move from the terrorism portfolio, since you don't pay enough attention to it, you're not doing what I recommend. I want to work full time on cybersecurity and I want to create a new position to do that. Eventually, it happened. And we did create the first cybersecurity policy position in the White House. And it was well-staffed. I had quite a good staff. And we wrote a national strategy for cybersecurity, which I read the other day. And, you know, 20 years on, it's still pretty good. My job is one of being a consultant, but it's a consultant to a diverse group of things.

I try to work for corporate boards and corporate leadership to explain the importance of cybersecurity to them. And I try to work with CISOs to be their advocate and coach and validator. You know, when I started in cybersecurity looking for that book, that would be the good introduction, it didn't exist. And when I started looking for university courses, they didn't exist. And so I wrote the book. And I got a lot of universities to start the courses. I got a lot of federal money to help universities start cyber programs. So a lot of what I wanted to learn then,

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