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Acceptance of Excellence in the Field of Public Policy Award at the 2014 RSA Conference

[Link to video]

Michael Daniel (Special Assistant to the President and White House Cybersecurity Coordinator)

Good morning, everyone. It's my great honor today to present the award for Excellence in the Field of Public Policy.

This year's award winner is a public servant who has been an active leader in our nation's cybersecurity efforts both for his agency and for the U.S. government as a whole.

Dr. Pat Gallagher has been a dedicated public servant for over 20 years, starting when he joined NIST in 1993—the National Institute of Standards and Technology, for those who don't speak government acronym. For the past 6 years, Dr. Gallagher has been an integral leader in the policy, strategy, and execution of significant cybersecurity efforts across the public and private sectors. Under his leadership, NIST has established the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence to demonstrate practical solutions by public- and private-sector partners.

This past year, he has led NIST's efforts under President Obama's executive order to improve cybersecurity of our critical infrastructure, and he has been a driving force in the development of the Cybersecurity Framework to help improve the cybersecurity of our critical infrastructure.

Dr. Gallagher's dedication is truly evidence of his excellence in the field of public policy. And, of course, it has recently been announced that Dr. Gallagher has been selected as the next chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh.

So, it's my great pleasure to introduce Pat Gallagher.

[Applause]

Pat Gallagher:

Great, well thank you, and good morning to everybody. It's obviously a real pleasure and honor to accept this award in public policy.

In thinking about the award, I was left with one thought: that an award in public policy is almost never about achieving an objective. It's usually about taking the critical first step. And so like the story we heard about Lynn McNulty, what I believe the critical first step was, in this case, was finding a way where government and industry can work effectively and collaboratively together.

The one thing I've learned in working on cybersecurity is that we are talking about a global system with the potential to do great good for everyone in the world. And our adversaries have the ability to work as individual actors, and what we have to do is find a way to work collectively.

And NIST—known originally as the National Bureau of Standards—is the country's oldest national laboratory, founded in 1901, with the sole purpose to work for industry, to be industry's national lab. And I hope the steps that we've taken over my tenure as director have supported that mission to enable you, to provide you with the technical input you need to act as a convener so that we can, in fact, take those collective actions for the great common good.

So, it's been a real pleasure, and thank you all, very much.

Created March 24, 2014, Updated October 4, 2016