AD Bob Kolasky
Director, National Risk Management Center
U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
Bob Kolasky was selected to lead the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) National Risk Management Center (NRMC) in 2018, at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). As one of CISA’s Assistant Directors, he oversees the Center’s efforts to facilitate a strategic, cross-sector risk management approach to cyber and physical threats to critical infrastructure. The Center provides a central venue for government and industry to combine their knowledge and capabilities in a uniquely collaborative and forward-looking environment. Center activities support both operational and strategic unified risk management efforts.
As head of the National Risk Management Center, Kolasky has the responsibility to develop integrated analytic capability to analyze risk to critical infrastructure and work across the national community to reduce risk. As part of that, he co-chairs the Information and Communications Technology Supply Chain Risk Management Task Force and leads CISA’s efforts to support development of a secure 5G network. He also serves on the Executive Committee for the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council.
Kolasky’s current position is the culmination of years of risk and resilience experience. He most recently served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary and Acting Assistant Secretary for Infrastructure Protection (IP), where he led the coordinated national effort to partner with industry to reduce the risk posed by acts of terrorism and other cyber or physical threats to the nation’s critical infrastructure, including election infrastructure.
Kolasky has served in a number of other senior leadership roles for DHS, including acting Deputy Under Secretary for NPPD before it became CISA and the Director of the DHS Cyber-Physical Critical Infrastructure Integrated Task Force to implement Presidential Policy Directive 21 on Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience, as well as Executive Order 13636 on Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity.
He is also the former Assistant Director for the Office of Risk Management Analysis at DHS where he was responsible for developing DHS’s formative policies and processes for risk management, including the DHS Risk Management Fundamentals and Risk Lexicon. Prior to joining DHS, he was a journalist and an entrepreneur. He helped start two of the first public policy web sites and served as the Managing Editor for IntellectualCapital.com.
Kolasky joined the Federal government in 2008 after six years as a management consultant. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1994 and from the Harvard Kennedy School in 2002.