The White House named Nabeela Barbari, a national security veteran, to President Biden’s National Security Council (NSC). Barbari will serve on the NSC as the nation’s director of resilience and response.
Barbari has held the post since February and will be in charge of steering national security policy, protecting critical infrastructure, and integrated risk management, according to her LinkedIn.
Prior to joining the NSC, Barbari had spent over 12 years at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Her last two posts were in DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) as deputy associate director of strategy and resources in the Cybersecurity Division after serving as acting associate director in CISA’s National Risk Management Center.
Outside of a two-year stint as the senior policy advisor for civil rights and civil liberties in the Office of the Secretary, all Barbari’s DHS experience prior to CISA’s creation took place in the former DHS Office of Infrastructure Protection. In fact, Barbari’s only recorded non-DHS experience was as a senior analyst at what is now an IBM subsidiary, supporting the Office of Infrastructure Protection from 2007-08.
Having critical infrastructure that is resilient and having a response ready is crucial now, as the weak links in the nation’s cybersecurity supply chains have been exposed by the ongoing “Sunburst” cyber-espionage campaign, and the Government Accountability Office recently published a report highlighting the cyber vulnerabilities in the nation’s electric distribution grid.
