Janet Vogel

Cybersecurity Leader of the Year

Janet Vogel has been the CISO at HHS since April 2018, after 12 years within the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. While this year brewed the “perfect storm” of facing a pandemic while increasingly relying on a virtual environment, Vogel said that rapidly scaling HHS’s security infrastructure to a vastly different operating environment ended up allowing the agency to work more effectively. “Even under the high stakes and high-pressured deadlines, our teams seamlessly collaborated, producing timely and appropriate responses to new and dangerous types of cybersecurity threats,” she said. The Emergency Use Authorization forced her to leave her own comfort zone, Vogel said, and allowed the agency to “expedite procurements, leverage technology capabilities such as machine learning, and stand up systems within days.” Once the pandemic is over, Vogel hopes agencies can continue to exchange meaningful cybersecurity information.