Daniel “Rags” Ragsdale, vice president of DOD strategy for Two Six Technologies, and Kevin Bierschenk, vice president and strategic account executive at Leidos, have been appointed co-chairs of the WashingtonExec Cyber Council for 2023-2024.
Ragsdale joined Two Six Technologies in 2021 following a decades-long service in the U.S. Army. He has experience at the Defense Department and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and expertise in cybersecurity. Bierschenk joined Leidos in early 2022, after more than 7 years of working in various roles for the Internal Revenue Service, ranging from senior technical adviser to project director of enterprise digitization.
As council co-chairs, Ragsdale and Bierschenk will lead conversations about current challenges, priorities and trends the cyber community faces.
Below, they also share about their unique perspectives based on their differing professional experiences, how they’ll bring their expertise to the Cyber Council, what they hope to accomplish as co-chairs and more.
Based on your extensive experience, what are some of the focus areas/hot topics you want to discuss with the council this year?
Kevin: Our emphasis is on “making the tent bigger.” To do so, we are focused on speakers and events that broaden the cyber community with an emphasis on diversity.
In addition to taking steps to increase the size of the Cyber Council and the diversity of its members, we will work to ensure that we invite speakers who are well-respected thought leaders with deep expertise and well-developed communication skills.
Also, we will turn to our members to help us identify speakers from a broad cross-section of organizations from across the whole of government, the private sector and the academic community.
We are confident that our members will continue to be interested in federal initiatives, including CMMC, cyber workforce programs, and the recently released National Cyber Strategy. We also anticipate continued and growing interest in emerging technologies that will impact the cyber landscape, including zero trust technologies, transformer-based large language models (i.e., OpenAI’s ChatGPT), quantum-resistant cryptography, distributed ledger technologies (i.e., blockchain, hashgraph, Directed Asynchronous Graphs, and holochains), among others.
How will your personal and career experience and expertise within the cyber community help lead the council in discussions on trending cyber-related topics?
Kevin: My observations from the last decade at the IRS have cemented the notion to be “all-in” on cybersecurity. As mission leaders, we must drive the elevation of cybersecurity as part of digital modernization efforts.
While most development teams are “baking in” cyber requirements early on in the development lifecycle, no system is secure without least privileged access. The cyber ecosystem is still at risk due to the ability of a bad actor that can take down critical mission workloads.
Additionally, a user who innocently clicks on a link could also bring forth a cascading incident that impacts the mission. My experience is to continue promoting to the workforce and users the value of cyber in their daily life. Cyber hygiene along with zero trust concepts work hand in hand and we will look for those speakers that bring these perspectives.
Rags: I spent the lion’s share of my professional life serving in the public sector, including nearly 40 years in the Department of Defense. Since the mid-1990s, my primary focus has been cyber R&D, cyber education and cyber workforce development.
During my service in the Pentagon, at West Point at Texas A&M and now in the private sector, I have acquired a deep understanding and full appreciation for many of the challenges we now face in providing for a safer, more secure and more resilient digital ecosystem.
Working closely with Kevin, I’m confident we’ll draw on our knowledge and experience to effectively moderate council discussions.
What does it mean for you to be the chair or co-chair of this council?
Kevin: As co-chairpersons of the Cyber Council, we’re both very excited about the opportunity to bring thought leaders to online and in-person WashingtonExec events, focusing on topics that will be of interest not only to the members of the Cyber Council but to other WashingtonExec Councils as well.
Rags: While we have had very different career paths, Kevin and I have served in numerous public and private sector roles focused on cybersecurity or cyber operations. Because of our varying backgrounds and experiences, we bring different but highly complementary perspectives to our roles as co-chairs of the Cbyer Council. In short, we make a great team!
Do you feel there is great value in connecting industry executives with government officials to discuss topics facing the cyber community? If so, why?
Kevin: The cybersecurity landscape is changing due to the actions of our adversaries and advances in technology that bad actors are amplifying. Partnerships between industry and government officials are designed to share insights to protect our country from threats.
We will continue to promote the need for the cyber community to get bigger. For example, our plans are to engage speakers from academia and industry that are also working toward addressing topics such as talent management in the cyber community.
Rags: Having had the good fortune to serve as both a government official and industry executive at a technology company, I have witnessed, first-hand, from both perspectives, the value of direct and frequent engagements between members of the public and private sectors. Those engagements often lead to a better understanding of requirements by commercial partners, which, in turn, leads to the more rapid and efficient development of enhanced capabilities.
Those engagements also help government partners to fully appreciate the realm of the possible in terms of advanced future capabilities, which they may not have otherwise envisioned.
Do you have any unique plans yet for the council?
Kevin: We are still thinking about unique and different events we could conduct. We welcome anyone with ideas to partner with us this year and make an impact on the council.
Rags: Kevin and I hope to build on the firm foundation laid by our predecessor, Tom Machelli, who served admirably as the WashjingtonExex Cyber Council chair for many years. Fortunately, Kevin is a wellspring of new ideas and new thinking about how we might not only increase the size and diversity of the Cyber Council but how we can better serve the council members.
What do you hope to accomplish as chair of this council, and what do you hope council members get out of your leadership?
Kevin: We want to accomplish a sense of community across the WashingtonExec councils and are committed to doing so. Additionally, a year from now, when we reflect, we expect to see new faces with different viewpoints that put forth momentum for council growth.
Rags: Ditto!