Web Security Chief Has Local Tech Roots
By Ellen McCarthy

So far, Internet security chief Amit Yoran has received a warm reception from government and industry officials, but the real tests of his abilities and influence are yet to come. The housekeeping may need to begin within his own agency -- a report released this week gave Homeland Security an F in Internet security.

When Mark Frantz, a vice president at the Carlyle Group, invited Amit Yoran out to breakfast this summer, he was planning to get some insight on a potential venture capital investment. And ideally he was hoping to entice Yoran, an established computer security executive, to step in and run the firm.
But Yoran had another agenda for the lunch. He had been asked to apply for the administration's top cyber-security position, and he wanted to know what it was like to work for Frantz's former boss, Tom Ridge. Two weeks later Frantz introduced the two.

Yoran's appointment to the position by President Bush in September is a perfect example of the sometimes blurry lines between government and business.
Yoran, whose unofficial coming-out party as the federal government's cyber-security chief took place last week at the National Cyber Security Summit, is often introduced as a former vice president of Symantec Corp. While he did work at the California security giant for about a year, the 33-year-old now charged with protecting America's Internet is actually a product of Washington's tech community.

Yoran moved to the Washington area 10 years ago and says it was his time spent here as a government employee, graduate student and technology entrepreneur that groomed him to be director of the National Cyber Security Division of the Department of Homeland Security. He filled the position formerly held by security veteran Richard A. Clarke.

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