Tom Perez announced today that Bob Lord is joining the Democratic National Committee's senior leadership team as the Chief Security Officer, where he will bring his industry experience to build up cybersecurity defenses for the DNC and state parties across the country. He joins a strong leadership team at the DNC that includes CEO Jess O’Connell, CMO Caitlin Mitchell, COO Laura Chambers, CFO Joe Smolskis, CTO Raffi Krikorian, Chief of Staff Sam Cornale, National Political and Organizing Director Amanda Brown Lierman, National Communications Director Xochitl Hinojosa, Research Director Lauren Dillon and Senior Advisor Will Hailer.
Bob is a technology executive who has more than 20 years of experience managing cybersecurity teams and establishing best information security practices. At Yahoo, Bob managed teams that conducted electronic crimes investigations. As the first security hire in the early days of Twitter, he served as director of information security where he was charged with building the teams responsible for application security, product security, and information security.
“We’re excited to welcome Bob to the team and can’t wait to work with him on shoring up the DNC’s institutional cyber defenses,” said DNC Chair Tom Perez. “When I took this job, I made it crystal clear that our organization’s cybersecurity required immediate attention and resources. I’m confident Bob’s skills and hard work will help protect us against the sort of cyberattacks and intrusions that are unfortunately all too common in today’s age. Defense is an essential part of any game plan, and I couldn’t be happier with Bob holding the line for the DNC.”
“I’m looking forward to helping strengthen the cybersecurity infrastructure and strategy for the Democrats,” said Bob Lord. “Cyber attacks are an unfortunate, but very real threat to our work. I'll be working to protect my new colleagues at the DNC from the attackers who would prefer to keep us distracted from our mission of getting Democrats across the nation elected. And my job doesn’t stop at the front door of the building—my team and I will work with state parties to update their information security strategies and deployments to change the economics for the attackers.”
In addition to his work at Twitter, Bob was most recently the Chief Information Security Officer at Yahoo, where he was responsible for all aspects of information security, product security, and electronic crime investigations. He managed dozens of security professionals who focused on software development, incident response, corporate security, security risk management, threat investigations, and offensive engineering.
Bob’s team responded to two breaches that occurred before his employment at Yahoo: one in 2014 and one in 2013. He worked with teams across the company to identify affected users, provide notice, and work with appropriate authorities as well as to identify and deploy security improvements to improve prevention and detection capabilities.
Bob’s team worked with the FBI to identify the individuals who committed the 2014 breach. In March of 2017, the Department of Justice indicted two FSB officers and two criminal hackers. The DOJ press release and underlying indictment detail the activities surrounding this crime. One of the indicted persons, a Canadian national, was arrested in March, extradited to the US, arraigned in San Francisco last August, and finally pleaded guilty in November.
Bob’s hiring is the latest in a series that Tom and the DNC have made in an effort to rebuild the Democratic Party’s tech and cybersecurity infrastructure. Last year, Tom hired Raffi Krikorian, formerly of Uber and Twitter, to serve as Chief Technology Officer. Raffi and the majority of his team come not from the political world but from the tech sector.
The DNC is building an amazing team that brings together top tech talent with people familiar with the way our political infrastructure works -- all with the goal of building the data and infrastructure needed for candidates to win up and down the ballot.
The DNC tech team’s initial hires include the following:
Pam Cardona – Program manager in charge of the Uber self-driving launch in Pittsburgh;
Lennon Day-Reynolds — Engineering at Stripe; formerly Director of Engineering at Urban Airship; Twitter Advertising;
Peter Seibel – Author and former lead of the abuse team and the internal tools team at Twitter;
Liza Daly – Former CTO of Safari Books;
Trisha Quan – Former HFA and Pinterest analytics engineer;
Felicity Pereyra – Analytics lead for HFA for FL, NC, NV, CO
