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Senior Department of Energy cyber official to step down

Bruce Walker has been a key player in the department’s efforts to protect U.S. utilities from state-sponsored hacking threats.
Department of Energy
(Getty Images)

Bruce Walker, who has served as a senior Department of Energy official focused on cybersecurity since 2017, is leaving his post later this month to work at a security nonprofit, CyberScoop has learned.

As an assistant Energy secretary, Walker has been a key player in the department’s efforts to protect U.S. utilities from state-sponsored hacking threats. He also has helped implement a White House executive order in May that keeps federal agencies and companies from installing risky foreign-owned equipment in the electric sector.

Walker confirmed to CyberScoop that he will continue some of this work in the nonprofit sector by joining a new resiliency organization — dubbed the Analysis & Resilience Center — that helps financial and energy companies protect themselves from cyberthreats. Walker previous spent nearly two decades at New York utility Con Edison.

At the Department of Energy, Walker has worked closely with Alexander Gates, a National Security Agency veteran who was installed as the department’s top cybersecurity official as part of a shakeup in February. In the last four years, the department has invested heavily in projects to help secure U.S. energy infrastructure, including through a threat-sharing agreement and a new strategy to reduce the risk of power-supply disruptions resulting from cyber-incidents.

Sean Lyngaas

Written by Sean Lyngaas

Sean Lyngaas is CyberScoop’s Senior Reporter covering the Department of Homeland Security and Congress. He was previously a freelance journalist in West Africa, where he covered everything from a presidential election in Ghana to military mutinies in Ivory Coast for The New York Times. Lyngaas’ reporting also has appeared in The Washington Post, The Economist and the BBC, among other outlets. His investigation of cybersecurity issues in the nuclear sector, backed by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, won plaudits from industrial security experts. He was previously a reporter with Federal Computer Week and, before that, with Smart Grid Today. Sean earned a B.A. in public policy from Duke University and an M.A. in International Relations from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

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