The Democratic National Committee hired a Yahoo executive to beef up its cyber security
- The Democratic National Committee hired Bob Lord as its new chief security officer on Thursday in an attempt to strengthen cyber defenses.
- Lord previously worked at Yahoo, where he detected one of the largest known data breaches in history.
The Democratic National Committee announced on Thursday the hiring of former Yahoo head of information security Bob Lord to serve as chief security officer in an effort to beef up its cyber security.
After being brought into Yahoo, Lord discovered a series of data breaches amounting to the largest known hack in history. Lord was then tasked with cleaning up the mess and working with the FBI to find the culprits.
"We're excited to welcome Bob to the team and can't wait to work with him on shoring up the DNC's institutional cyber defenses," DNC Chairman Tom Perez said in a statement. "When I took this job, I made it crystal clear that our organization's cybersecurity required immediate attention and resources."
"I'm confident Bob's skills and hard work will help protect us against the sort of cyberattacks and intrusions that are unfortunately all too common in today's age," Perez added. "Defense is an essential part of any game plan, and I couldn't be happier with Bob holding the line for the DNC."
Lord, a Silicon Valley veteran venturing into politics for the first time, said in a statement that he is "looking forward to helping strengthen the cybersecurity infrastructure and strategy for the Democrats."
"Cyber attacks are an unfortunate, but very real, threat to our work," Lord added. "I'll be working to protect my new colleagues at the DNC from the attackers who would prefer to keep us distracted from our mission of getting Democrats across the nation elected. And my job doesn't stop at the front door of the building - my team and I will work with state parties to update their information security strategies and deployments to change the economics for the attackers."
The DNC's recruitment of Lord comes after a disastrous 2016 election cycle for the Democrats in terms of cyber security, in which operatives working on behalf of the Russian government obtained countless emails and information to selectively leak to the public.
The massive hack resulted in a complete house cleaning following the election by Perez. Lord's hire is yet another technology staffer to come from a Silicon Valley background, including DNC Chief Technology Officer Raffi Krikorian, who has had stints at companies like Uber and Twitter.