Alicia Lynch joined the Science Applications International Corp. team in April 2018, bringing more than 30 years of experience with the Defense Department, the defense contracting community and the private sector. She retired as a colonel from the U.S. Army in 2012, where she served as both an intelligence officer and a cybersecurity specialist.
Over the past two years, Lynch, who serves as vice president and chief information security officer, led the company’s effort to build a consolidated, high-performing cybersecurity organization, uniting critical processes and groups to provide new and improved capabilities and operational support to the business.
Lynch has been instrumental in strategically securing SAIC’s future technology efforts, including cloud services, managed security services, supply chain security and advanced threat hunting efforts. Her ability to direct large, enterprisewide initiatives to realize new security functions serves as a major innovation driver for the company.
Lynch’s leadership has also resulted in a high retention rate amid an extremely competitive talent market in the cybersecurity sector. Her continued focus on communicating vision and strategy to all members of SAIC’s cybersecurity organization empowers and enables every security professional on her team. She provides mentoring and development of leaders and technical professionals to achieve measurable outcomes for SAIC, focusing on the long-term sustainability of the organization.
Lynch has also directed the development of the ServiceNow GRC platform to track, manage and report on all cybersecurity risk throughout the organization. All elements of policy, compliance, risk, incident response and vulnerability management are now integrated into SAIC’s ServiceNow ITMS system, providing efficient and timely reporting throughout the enterprise. This success is often replicated as a service that SAIC provides to some federal customers.
Why Watch:
Lynch’s proudest accomplishment to date is recently leading SAIC through a successful DCMA assessment of SAIC’s implementation of security controls. Her main focus area for 2020 is to carry that momentum from the assessment forward as SAIC begins a journey to meet and exceed the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification standards of excellence.