Melissa Hathaway worked on the development of Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative when she worked in the Bush White House and assessed the CNCI as the leader of President Obama's 60-day cyberspace policy review.

GovInfoSecurity.com's Executive Editor Eric Chabrow ran into Hathaway at the RSA Conference 2010 in San Francisco earlier this month, just after the White House issued a declassified summary of CNCI, a series of initiatives aimed at securing federal government information assets and the nation's critical IT infrastructure. Besides responding to a question whether declassifying parts of CNCI was a good idea, Hathaway also addressed:

• Collaboration between government and the private sector and the private sector and private sector on developing cyber defenses.
• How much regulation the government should impose on the private sector to assure IT security.
• A new idea she hadn't thought of before attending the RSA IT security conference.

Hathaway left government service last summer, forming an IT security consultancy. Among her clients: Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Cisco.

Hathaway is a protégé of retired Adm. Mike McConnell, who resigned a year ago as the nation's National Intelligence director, returning to the management consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton. Under McConnell, Hathaway served as a senior adviser and cyber coordination executive. She chaired the National Cyber Study Group, contributing to the development of the CNCI. That led to her appointment as director of the Joint Interagency Cyber Task Force in January 2008. At Booz Allen, where she first worked with McConnell, Hathaway served as a cybersecurity strategist, leading the information operations and long-range strategy and policy support business units.

In February 2009, President Obama charged Hathaway to conduct a wide-ranging, 60-day interagency review the government's cybersecurity plans and activities and gave her the title acting senior director for cyberspace for the National Security and Homeland Security Councils.

Hathaway, who holds a BA from American University and a special certificate in information operations at the U.S. Armed Force Staff College.

Here are other interviews and stories about Hathaway from the GovInfoSecurity.com archives:

• What Worries Melissa Hathaway? (Interview)
• White House Must Lead(Interview)
• The Influencers: Melissa Hathaway (Profile)
• The Melissa Hathaway Not-So-Mystery Tour (Blog)