Supply chain security has been top of mind for the government and for government contractors in recent years as new threats emerge. In a new video interview with Executive Mosaic, William Lietzau, director of the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, spoke about the urgency behind securing the supply chain and shared what his agency is doing to help.
“For two decades now, we’ve been focused on the counterterrorism fight — and terrorists are not out there trying to get on the board of directors of one of our major defense corporations. Our near-peer adversaries are,” Lietzau told Executive Mosaic’s Summer Myatt, “and we need to up our game in that regard.”
Lietzau, a 2023 Wash100 Award winner, explained that DCSA has two main pillars: personnel security and industrial security. On the industrial security side of the agency, Lietzau said, “We vet companies just like we vet people.”
“We vet most specifically the companies in the NISP, the National Industrial Security Program, those companies that are doing classified work for the United States government. Like personnel clearances, we do about 90 to 95 percent of the US government’s contractor workforce,” said Lietzau.
According to Lietzau, the DCSA works on industrial security missions related to arms and ammunition controls, cyber controls and foreign ownership, control and influence, or FOCI, among others. The agency also sometimes provides counterintelligence information to its trusted contractor workforce to help them defeat intrusion attempts.
But DCSA is also moving more into the unclassified side of the defense contractor base due to a shift in supply chains.
“More recently, we’ve started expanding into the unclassified defense supply chain, recognizing that, unlike a couple of decades ago, where the supply chain meant food, fuel and water, today’s supply chain includes software, minerals from that are not naturally part of our supply chain and things that are much more vulnerable to intervening forces of foreign intelligence entities or adversaries,” he said.
“And in that case, we’re starting to look at the progeny of companies as they take on big defense contracts, even if it’s not for classified work, so that we can identify which companies are safer bets from a foreign ownership, control and influence perspective,” Lietzau added.
Find out more about DCSA’s role in industrial security reform and in the whole-of-government effort to modernize personnel vetting processes — watch the full video interview with DCSA Director William Lietzau here.