David Mussington

Executive Assistant Director for Infrastructure Security

U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)

Dr. David Mussington currently serves as the Executive Assistant Director for Infrastructure Security at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Since February 2021, he continues to lead CISA’s efforts to secure the nation’s critical infrastructure in coordination with government and the private sector. Key areas of focus include vulnerability and risk assessments; securing public gatherings; developing and conducting training and exercises; and securing high-risk chemical facilities.

Dr. Mussington has academic as well as private and public sector experience.

Immediately prior to joining CISA, Dr. Mussington was Professor of the Practice and Director for the Center for Public Policy and Private Enterprise at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy. His research and teaching activities focused on integrated cyber physical system risk management, election cybersecurity, and critical infrastructure security risk management. He is published in academic and professional journals, including published handbooks by the University of Oxford in the U.K., working papers co-written with partners at the U.S. Naval War College, and peer reviewed articles in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers outlets about metrics and risk frameworks for cyber defense. Most recently, he conducted projects on election cybersecurity, social media information security issues, and the security of Internet and Communications Technology supply chains.

At RAND Corporation, Dr. Mussington led counter terrorism and cyber security studies for the Department of Defense, the Department of Transportation, and Amtrak. He later served as Amtrak’s senior official overseeing infrastructure protection, counter terrorism, and emergency response programs as Amtrak’s Chief of Corporate Security .

At the Institute for Defense Analyses, as the Assistant Director of the Information Technology and Systems Division (ITSD), Dr. Mussington directed cybersecurity studies for DHS, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Federal Communications Commission, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He also led cyber risk assessments for the Bank of Canada and for private sector entities in the U.S. and Canada.

In 2010, Dr. Mussington served as the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) Senior Adviser for Cyber Policy, where he led the preparation and release of the 2011 Defense Strategy for Operating in Cyberspace, which was DOD’s first enterprise-wide cyber strategy document. He later served on the Obama administration’s National Security Council staff as Director for Surface Transportation Security Policy.

Dr. Mussington has a Doctorate in Political Science from Canada’s Carleton University and undertook post-doctoral work at Harvard’s Belfer Center (where he was a MacArthur Scholar) and at the U.K.’s International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). In 2021, Dr. Mussington was elected a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

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