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Network cybersecurity must strike a delicate balance between openness and safety. ESnet has long focused more on the first, in order to facilitate scientific communication, data sharing, and collaboration. But in today’s Wild West of ransomware, phishing, and other threats, safeguarding this vital network is equally critical. 

Deputy Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Alex Withers oversees a reorganized, two-part structure for security at ESnet: the Security Engineering group, which he heads, and a new Threat & Vulnerability Management group, which Chief Security Officer Adam Slagell is leading during the search for a senior threat hunter/DOE community coordinator. For Security Engineering, among Alex’s responsibilities are overseeing ESnet’s effort to comply with the federal Zero Trust requirements — an approach to cybersecurity that goes beyond “trust but verify” and treats all networks and traffic as potential threats. Alex will be making sure that any new security policies, procedures, and architecture do not impede ESnet’s vision of enabling scientific progress that is completely unconstrained by the physical location of instruments, people, computational resources, or data.

Alex has deep experience in threat intelligence sharing, policy and compliance, and security architecture. Most recently he was the CISO and cybersecurity division manager at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois. While at NCSA, Alex oversaw groups responsible for security operations, applied cybersecurity research, cybersecurity engagement, and scientific computing in the HIPAA and Controlled Unclassified Information [CUI] space. He was a PI or co-PI on several National Science Foundation awards for projects focused on intrusion detection, threat intelligence dissemination, and capabilities-based authorization for access to scientific computing resources. Before NCSA, Alex worked for Brookhaven National Laboratory as a security and systems engineer for over 10 years. 

Alex grew up in Alaska and now lives in Urbana, Illinois, where he works out of ESnet’s Champaign office with Adam and Security Engineering team members Kapil Agrawal, Michael Dophelde, and Sam Oehlert, as well as about a dozen other ESnetters. He’s an avid long-distance runner – as are his wife and two of his four children. In the last few years, Alex has completed around a dozen ultra-marathons, or “ultras,” ranging from 50 km to 100 miles – something he’s “always reluctant to tell people about because it sounds crazy.”   

What brought you to ESnet?

Really it was the opportunity for growth — both to tackle new challenges in cybersecurity architecture and for me professionally, to try something new. ESnet is responsible for connecting a massive portion of the scientific computing infrastructure that supports not just this country’s scientific investments but also international collaborations. It’s growing extremely rapidly, and it’s a giant target for all sorts of reasons, whether from state-sponsored attacks or cyber criminals or anything in between. And so it looks like an immense challenge, and that’s very attractive to me.

What is the most exciting thing going on in your field right now?

There’s been a shift in how people view cybersecurity that’s making it easier for us to collaborate and innovate with users. 

Traditionally, cybersecurity has had a bad reputation as being the people who say “No, you can’t do this; no, you can’t do that.” And in the research and education sector, the culture tends to be much more open, much more about getting done what has to be done, whether that’s moving data around or access to computing for scientists and their students. That culture has often bumped up against cybersecurity, which tends to want to wall things off. But cybersecurity is now much more about enabling science. As I tell people, “Listen, the funding agencies, the government, have invested billions of dollars in science and in this infrastructure that you rely on for your particle accelerator, electron microscope, whatever. And we want to protect that investment, because at the end of the day, things like cybersecurity incidents, they can disrupt your work. They can stop it dead in its tracks, and that’s money that’s lost.” 

So today’s cybersecurity is about understanding how researchers use these systems and devices, how they access them through the network – and working together to make sure that we enable their use and make it available while at the same time very secure. At ESnet, we want to ensure the integrity of the data so that researchers can be productive on their computational systems and networks. That frame of approach is easier than traditional cybersecurity, which is more focused on things like confidentiality and privacy.

What book, movie, or podcast would you recommend?

A podcast I’ve been really enjoying has been “Some Work, All Play” by David Roche and Megan Roche. It’s an excellent inclusive running podcast for all runners, especially trail running, which is a hobby I enjoy.

Running ultras sounds like a little more than just a “hobby.” Tell us more about why you do it?

Well, a lot of people think of it as a very physical sort of endeavor. And I mean…that’s true, and I don’t want to downplay that, but you’d be surprised to find out that it’s not as difficult as you think it is. The real challenge is the mental challenge. It is extremely difficult mentally to go out on a trail and run for hours and hours and hours and hours. You’re really fighting against the urge to drop out and call it a day. And sometimes you’re not successful. 

What’s great about it is pushing yourself up against the limits of what you can do. There are people who seriously race these things, and they win. I’m not in any danger of doing that, I assure you. For me, it’s racing against various aspects of yourself. Racing against yourself mentally. Racing against your past self. Maybe you’re going to do better on a race you’ve done before. Sometimes you’re racing against your own stomach, because you have to eat during these things—but it’s not a pleasant task to eat while you’re doing all this running! 

It’s very challenging, but it’s also a lot of fun. It’s very rewarding when it works out.