Mark Weatherford was appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to his present position as Director and Chief Information Security Officer, Office of Information Security, State of California.  In this role, he has broad authority over California’s cyber security activities and is responsible for state government cyber security posture including setting risk management, data asset protection, privacy and network security policy, standards, and procedures.

Previous to his employment in California, Mr. Weatherford served as the Chief Information Security Officer for the State of Colorado where he was appointed by two successive governors to develop and lead the state information security program.  A former U.S. Naval Cryptologic Officer, Weatherford led the U.S. Navy’s Computer Network Defense operations and the Naval Computer Incident Response Team and as a member of the Raytheon Company, he successfully built and established the San Diego Navy/Marine Corps Intranet Security Operations Center (SOC).

Mr. Weatherford holds a BS from the University of Arizona and an MS from the Naval Postgraduate School. He is committed to raising the profile of the information security industry and he pursues this goal as a member of the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center, the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, the Information Systems Security Association, and the Information Systems Audit and Control Association.  He also holds Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) certifications.  Mr. Weatherford was recently awarded Information Security magazine’s prestigious “Security 7 Award” for 2008.