Top White House InfoSec Official Resigns, Warns White House Will be Hacked

The White House cybersecurity staff took a hit this week with a senior member tendering his resignation, and with a scathing memo no less. The official claims that the White House is forgoing security for convenience, among other things. 

The staffer in question is Dimitrios Vastakis. Vastakis was officially the branch chief of the White House computer network defense. The resignation of Vastakis is just the latest in a series of departures from White House infosec workers. 

Vastakis was originally a member of the Office of the Chief Information Security Officer (OCISO). The office was made just five years ago, once it emerged that hackers connected to Russian intelligence agencies had breached the White House systems. 

The OCISO team made some significant improvements to White House systems, known collective as the Presidential Information Technology Community – or PITC. 

That all changed this July. The OCISO was dissolved, and their duties were instead handed to the White House Office of the Chief Information Officer. 

The staff who had bolstered the defenses of the White House network had found themselves driven out. Vastakis said in his memo that the team was “systematically targeted for removal […] through various means.”

All of this comes together to create a very hostile working environment. A working environment that Vastakis says forced most of the people on the GS-14 and GS-15 pay grades (the highest for civil servants) to leave. 

This is all creating a dangerous situation for the White House that has Vastakis worried. “Given all the changes I’ve seen in the last three months, I foresee the White House is posturing itself to be electronically compromised once again.” 

This isn’t the kind of prediction you want from someone who could call themselves the chief of the White House computer network defense.