Tactics in Federal Cyber Incident Reporting

Mark Bacharach serves as Deputy Chief Information Security Officer at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency where he works with executive management to determine acceptable levels of risk, proactively works to implement practices that meet agreed-on policies and standards for information security.  Mark oversees enterprise information security risk management programs and is responsible for establishing and maintaining the information security program to ensure that information assets and technology, applications, systems, infrastructure, and processes are adequately protected.

Before coming to EPA, he worked for the Dept. of the Navy, as the Deputy Director for Operations at US Marine Corps Forces Cyberspace Command. Mark is a Retired Marine Colonel and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from the University of Rochester, a Master of Science degree in Information Technology Management with a concentration in Information Assurance from Johns Hopkins University, and a Global MBA from the University North Carolina, Kenan Flagler Business School, and is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP).

Sean Connelly serves as the Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) Program Manager at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In this role, he leads the TIC Program Management Office, which is responsible for leading the Office of Management and Budget’s TIC initiative within CISA. The TIC initiative is the federal government’s strategy to securely protect government networks that connect to the Internet and cloud providers. CISA’s TIC Program Office works with a wide-spectrum of partners across government and industry and leads the way at enhancing network security across the federal enterprise horizon.

Mr. Connelly joined DHS in 2013 and has served in a variety of roles, including the development of TIC 1, 2 and 3, along with the deployment of CISA’s sensor capabilities (operationally known as EINSTEIN 3A), and was part of the initial architectural team that stood-up the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation program. Additionally, Mr. Connelly was a lead author on the ‘IT Modernization Report to the President’ in 2017, as well as a co-author of NIST’s Special Publicization towards ‘Zero Trust Architectures’ in 2019.

Prior to joining the federal civilian service, Mr. Connelly worked as a consultant to the Department of State, where he led architectural initiatives within the department, including the adoption of TIC 1 and TIC 2, as well as the design of the State Department’s next-generation telecommunications platform, providing IT for a global workforce. Overall, Mr. Connelly has over 15 years of experience in the federal domain, and over 20 years of experience in the IT and cybersecurity domain.

Mr. Connelly earned a MS in Information Technology Management from George Washington University, and holds two Cisco Certified Information Expert (CCIE) certifications. Mr. Connelly holds the first CCIE in Routing, and a second CCIE in Security.