Senior NSA Official Patrick Dowd is Moonlighting With Keith Alexander's Private Cybersecurity Firm [View all]

[KoKo]

Corruption INC.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/oct/17/senior-nsa-official-moonlighting-private-cybersecurity-firm

The former director of the National Security Agency has enlisted the US surveillance giant’s current chief technology officer for his lucrative cybersecurity business venture, an unusual arrangement undercutting Keith Alexander’s assurances he will not profit from his connections to the secretive, technologically sophisticated agency.

Patrick Dowd continues to work as a senior NSA official while also working part time for Alexander’s IronNet Cybersecurity, a firm reported to charge up to $1m a month for advising banks on protecting their data from hackers. It is exceedingly rare for a US official to be allowed to work for a private, for-profit company in a field intimately related to his or her public function.

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Since retiring from the NSA in March and entering the burgeoning field of cybersecurity consulting, Alexander has vociferously defended his ethics against charges of profiting off of his NSA credentials. Alexander was the founding general in charge of US Cyber Command, the first military command charged with defending Defense Department data and attacking those belonging to adversaries. Both positions provide Alexander with unique and marketable insights into cybersecurity.

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Alexander, whose adult life was spent in uniform, intends to file patents for what he has described obliquely as a new forecasting model for detecting network intrusions. His assurance prompted speculation that the retired general is profiting from technical sophistication that competitors who do not have a US intelligence pedigree cannot hope to replicate.

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Alexander portrayed Dowd’s unusual joint positions with the NSA and IronNet as a way for the public to keep benefitting from Dowd’s expertise, while saying less about how Alexander will profit from the same skill set.