White House selects cybersecurity chief

The White House has chosen an industry information security specialist as its cybersecurity chief, an official said Monday, filling a job that has had no permanent director for a year.

Greg Garcia will be nominated later this week as the Department of Homeland Security's assistant secretary for cybersecurity and telecommunications, said a department official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement had not yet been made. He will replace acting cybersecurity director Donald "Andy" Purdy Jr., who is a two-year contract employee on loan from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Garcia, vice president of the Information Technology Association of America, did not return calls seeking comment Monday.

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Carnegie Mellon has received $19 million in contracts from Homeland Security's cybersecurity division this year under Purdy's oversight.

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The cybersecurity job was created in July 2005, but department officials have struggled to find candidates willing to take significant pay cuts from industry jobs to fill it.

A test of mock Internet attacks concluded last week that government and industry officials were widely unable to fight back quickly and effectively against a series of simulated hackings that aimed to halt subways and trigger power outages.