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Home » About Norwich » SGS Today »
Gil Vega receives an award from Julie Myers, assistant secretary of homeland security for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) [photo courtesy of Gil Vega].
MSIA alumnus and instructor applies program lessons to homeland security
by Daphne Larkin, staff
© Oct. 31, 2008 Norwich University Office of Communications
As acronyms go, ICE is pretty cool.
In August 2008, Gil Vega, a 2005 graduate of Norwich University's Master of Science in Information Assurance (MSIA) and chief information security officer for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), received two agency awards for his work.
Launched in 2003 as part of the newly formed Department of Homeland Security, ICE is the department's largest investigative arm and the second-largest investigative agency in the federal government.
With approximately 15,000 employees and an annual budget of more than $5 billion, ICE is rooted in intelligence sharing among law enforcement agencies at the local, state and international levels, according to Vega.
"That's the focus of the entire agency," Vega said. "The goal is to share data while securing it as much as possible."
Vega, 41, oversees about 30 employees and 60 contractors that provide support to operations conducted by ICE special agents at 600 domestic and 60 overseas sites.
All told, there are about 30,000 IT users, or people on computers who need secure yet fluid access to information.
"It's a patchwork of locations, which are very difficult to secure," Vega said.
When it works, ICE successfully executes an operation, such as its recent takedown of 22 alleged members of the MS-13 gang. The series of arrests concluded a three-year investigation into the Hispanic gang for murder, racketeering and drug and firearms trafficking in San Francisco.
One of the awards Vega recently received — the ICE Core Value Award — was for expanding his department, which was relying heavily on contractors, from three employees to 31. Vega developed a strategy to build in more government oversight by hiring managers to oversee contractors, "professionalizing" the division.
Drawing on skills honed in MSIA that include an emphasis on writing technical recommendations for nontechnical senior executives, Vega launched a campaign he called a "slow drip of IT awareness" to educate agency leaders of information security threats posed by the contractor model.
"It was a huge sales job to come in and convince the agency to spend millions of dollars...to get the senior executive buy-in," he said.
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“The human element has always been underplayed [in IT security].” |
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Vega is a part-time instructor for MSIA. He has taught seminars on prevention using technical defenses and detection, response and hot topics. MSIA focuses on IT security from a business perspective, and includes a seminar on human factors, stressing the importance of addressing security needs without inhibiting a business's ability to function.
This skill defines the nature of Vega's professional challenges of securing fluid data; allowing access, but only to the right people.
"The human element has always been underplayed (in IT security)," he said.
The second award — the DHS Partner Award — addressed an identity management program Vega's department restructured for greater efficiency, which boasts a recurring $6 million savings for Homeland Security and taxpayers.
Homeland Security includes seven major and 15 minor government agencies such as the Secret Service and the Coast Guard. Vega said his group "has an expertise in identity management, so we provided the service not just to ICE but for all [of the department]."
In August, Vega was presented with the awards at the 2008 ICE Assistant Secretary's Awards Ceremony.
A New Jersey native, Vega is a former Army soldier who also spent nine years as a civilian police officer in Prince George's County, Md. He pursued his college degree during that time and then moved into the world of IT in the late 1990s.
MSIA laid the foundation for where Vega is now, a natural intersection of his interests in law enforcement and IT security.
Vega said going through MSIA "shows a seriousness and commitment" to the discipline and was a big help in getting him the interviews for the positions he wanted.
Within his first two years as chief information security officer at ICE, Vega is already making an impact.
"It's what I've always been interested in."
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