Goldman Sachs has raided the White House in its fight against hackers

Goldman Sachs alumni might be dominating the ranks of the Trump administration, but the U.S. investment bank has just raided the White House to ensure that it’s not infiltrated by hackers.

Goldman has just hired Andy Ozment as a managing director and co-chief information security officer in New York. Ozment has spent the past nine years working in cyber-security for various U.S. government departments including the White House, the Department of Defense and latterly the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Ironically, considering the number of former Goldman Sachs employees in Donald Trump’s key advisory team, Ozment departed the DHS for Goldman in early January as part of a series of changes in the department as the new administration moved in. Gregory Touhill, United States chief information security officer for the Office of Management and Budget, also left in January.

Ozment led a team of cyber-security professionals at DHS and, according to Fedscoop, oversaw the department’s response to the data breach at the Office of Personnel Networks in 2015. Hackers stole personal information – including social security numbers, birth dates and even finger prints – on over 20m federal employees.

Ozment has spent much of his career in U.S. government departments. However, he also worked at Merrill Lynch in London in information security and privacy for a brief stint in 2005.

He was senior director for cyber-security at the National Security Council in the White House from 2012-2014, when he joined the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as assistant secretary for cyber-security and communications.

Investment banks have been increasingly concerned about information security and have had to draft in senior staff in-house in recent years. Previously, most banks tended to utilise consultancies for their cyber-security, but had to build their teams as it became a bigger priority.

Usually, banks look outside of the financial sector for expertise. BNP Paribas, for example, has just hired John Rogers as head of information security for Americas. He joined from consultants Booz Allen Hamilton. Cherie McGuire joined Standard Chartered last year as chief information security officer, having previously headed up cyber-security for Symantec.

Goldman Sachs is hiring for cyber-security, but not in huge numbers. Right now, it has three jobs in this area in the U.S. Two are for analysts within its Threat Management Center in Dallas, but it also has a VP role for a application security architect in New York. It's also hiring for its security incident response team in Bengaluru.

Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com