Beau Houser to Bring SBA Cybersecurity Experience to Census Bureau

Beau Houser, the incoming chief information security officer of the Census Bureau, said he looks forward to addressing the challenge of safeguarding the technological platforms behind the 2020 population count, Federal News Radio reported Thursday. 

Houser is set to join the bureau in mid-September after serving as CISO of the Small Business Administration for two years. “I’m hoping Census is the same kind of challenge for me because that’s where I find joy as a CISO, solving these large complex challenges,” he said in an interview on Ask the CIO.

During the interview, he discussed the challenge associated with cloud security. Houser also mentioned the approaches SBA used to implement the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation program and the Trusted Internet Connections initiative. 

“Skepticism of cloud security is still prevalent,” he said. “That’s probably one of the biggest challenges and you really have to get folks to see it firsthand. We’ve done over 30 demonstrations as an agency to other federal agencies. We are trying to be transparent about what we are doing and how we are doing it.”