Federal agencies picked up, shed IT execs in March

The federal government adjusting its cyber posture led to big hiring shifts, topping C-suite employment news for March.

DOD goes to DOGE for AI guidance

The new chief data officer for the Department of Defense is engineer Gavin Kliger.

Kliger, a 2020 graduate of UC Berkeley, entered the federal government as part of Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative. He previously worked for Databricks, an AI platform.

In a post on X, DOD (currently referred to by the administration as the Department of War) emphasized Kliger’s AI focus, noting he will set policies for the military’s use of the technology. Kliger’s experience includes working on the launch of the GenAI.mil platform, the agency said.

“My mission is to integrate the unparalleled innovation of America’s private sector with the Department’s operational expertise to rapidly deliver advanced AI capabilities to our warfighters,” Kliger said in a statement in the DOD X post.

DHS says goodbye to CISO

Elsewhere in the federal government, the Department of Homeland Security moved on from its CISO, longtime agency tech staffer Hemant Baidwan.

Baidwan left the department in early March to take a position at Knox Systems as CISO. The move capped a decade-plus career at DHS; he was CISO at the agency for the past two years.

Prior to his time at DHS, Baidwan spent over four years at ICE as governance and risk management chief.

“The mission does not change,” Baidwan said in a post on LinkedIn of his move to the private sector. “Just the vantage point.”

An AI C-suite move

Agentic AI company Kai announced the appointment of new CISO Alfredo Hickman on March 19.

Hickman, a military veteran, brings decades of experience to the role. Before joining Kai, he was at Obsidian Security for seven and a half years, ending his time there as CISO. He also spent over two years at Rackspace in various security roles.

At Kai, Hickman will focus on AI deployment, he said in a statement.

“Attackers are leveraging AI to move at machine speed, while most security teams are still buried under manual workflows, fragmented tools, and overwhelming noise,” Hickman said. “I’ve experienced those pressures firsthand. AI can fundamentally transform how security works, but only if it’s applied in a way that truly understands the practitioner’s reality.”