CSIRO says hello to new CISO

The CSIRO has appointed Jayne Leighton as chief information security officer.

Leighton will be responsible for leading a team of specialists to deliver CSIRO’s cyber operations, policy, training, incident response, risk assessment, contract review, incident prevention, detection and forensics capabilities, the organisation said.

“I am excited to lead CSIRO’s cyber security operations, and am looking forward to being a part of the extraordinary and innovative organisation that is CSIRO. It will be wonderful to contribute to and enable CSIRO’s scientific and organisational objectives, to support the CSIRO culture while ensuring the security and integrity of CSIRO’s information systems,” Leighton said.

Australia’s national science agency had been seeking a candidate for the role since the end of last year.

Leighton sits on the executive of CSIRO’s Information Management and Technology, a function made up of 300 staff spread across twenty-seven CSIRO sites nationally, led by CIO Brendan Dalton.

“It’s fantastic to have Jayne Leighton on board as our new CISO. Having a highly skilled and experienced leader helping guide the implementation of CSIRO Strategy 2020 will be invaluable,” Dalton said.

Leighton, who began work at CSIRO two weeks ago, has held senior leadership roles at Deloitte, Thales Australia and the Federal Government.

She joins from Leidos where her most recent engagement was building and leading the platform security capability for Defence’s End User Computing (EUC) project, implementing the new Windows 10 SOE to Defence’s 100,000 geographically dispersed PROTECTED user base.