Kemba Walden won’t get permanent national cyber director role, surprising lawmakers and cybersecurity leaders

Acting National Cyber Director Kemba Walden won’t be keeping the role permanently, despite her central role in the office’s rise to prominence and broad support in the cybersecurity field.

The Record reported that two anonymous sources “with knowledge of the decision” confirmed Walden will not replace former National Cyber Director Chris Inglis, who left the job earlier this year, in a permanent capacity. The Record’s sources said the White House’s reason for denying Walden a nomination “defies imagination” and is “bullshit and nonsensical.”

The role requires confirmation by the Senate. According to The Washington Post, other sources said Walden was turned down due to issues with personal debt, which the White House claimed could complicate the Senate approval process. Experts told the paper “passing over a qualified candidate due to personal debt is unusual,” especially “if she’s actually paying the debt or hasn’t defaulted on the debt.”

As the Post reported, Walden has played a key role in developing the National Cybersecurity Strategy and its recently released implementation plan, and had support from key lawmakers, including the House Homeland Security Committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, and the co-chairs of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, Sen. Angus King and Rep. Mike Gallagher. Walden is also one of the most prominent Black, female leaders in the cybersecurity field, which is slowly diversifying after historically being dominated by white men.

Cybersecurity groups have also been pressuring the White House for weeks to nominate a permanent cyber director, warning it may become more difficult to pass a nominee after the Senate’s recess in August. The Record reported the decision to pass over Walden would likely frustrate cybersecurity leaders in the public and private sectors, while the Post wrote it “stunned friends and colleagues who heard about it.”

“She’s well respected, for good reasons, by the cyber community, and has done a good acting role,” Bob Kolasky, senior VP for critical infrastructure at Exiger and former assistant director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), told IT Brew. “She is an eminently qualified public servant, and would have done a great job if she had been nominated.”

Michael Daniel, president and CEO of the Cyber Threat Alliance, agreed, and told IT Brew he was “really disappointed” in the decision. “The reasons that leaked out into the press about why make no sense to me," Daniel said. However, he predicted Walden’s withdrawal would not necessarily derail the national cyber strategy’s implementation.

“One of the things that is very impressive about the Office of the National Cyber Directorate is the number of really top-quality people they have,” Daniel said. “The strategy and the implementation plan really did go through a very strong interagency process, and so there’s a lot of interagency buy-in.”