Biden campaign taps Obama administration alum to lead cybersecurity team

Eric Geller
·2 min read
Democratic presidential candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden speaks at Alexis Dupont High School in Wilmington, Del., Tuesday, June 30, 2020. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Joe Biden’s presidential campaign has hired a veteran cybersecurity expert to oversee its defense against hackers during a general election expected to attract significant interest from foreign adversaries.

Chris DeRusha, a former White House cyber adviser and DHS cyber staffer in the Obama administration, has joined the campaign as its chief information security officer, he told POLITICO in an email. DeRusha most recently served as Michigan’s chief security officer.

Filling out the tech ranks: The Biden campaign has also hired Silicon Valley veteran Jacky Chang as its chief technology officer. Chang was a senior engineer on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and worked for the Democratic National Committee’s voter protection team during the 2018 midterms. The Washington Post first reported both hires.

Battening down the hatches: The Biden campaign faces a diverse array of cyber threats and needs a top-notch team to defend its staff and volunteers from digital attacks. In a statement, the campaign said it “takes cybersecurity seriously and is proud to have hired high quality personnel with a diverse breadth of experience, knowledge, and expertise to ensure our campaign remains secure.” The campaign has posted job applications for several roles on DeRusha’s team.

Nascent space: Campaign CISOs are still something of a novelty. Despite Russian hackers exposing campaigns’ digital weaknesses in 2016, hardly any of the 2020 Democratic primary contenders hired a CISO. The only candidate known to have hired someone for the position, Pete Buttigieg, lost his CISO over what the former operative called “fundamental philosophical differences with campaign management.”

The other side of the aisle: The Trump campaign also employs someone to handle cybersecurity full-time, a campaign spokesperson told POLITICO. The spokesperson, who insisted on anonymity to discuss security issues, declined to name the staffer or specify their title, but they said that the position was "not a new hire."