Veda Sims: A measure of risk
Name: Veda Sims
Age: 36
Organization: Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board
Title: Chief Information Security Officer
Nominated for: Leading the in-depth security risk assessments that paved the way for taking Recovery.gov to the cloud and setting up the board’s records management program.
First IT mentor: John Hetrick was my first IT mentor when I joined the team at AT&T Government Solutions early in my career. He was instrumental in making me a strong advocate for using a systematic and holistic approach to information assurance.
Latest accomplishment on the job: Creating an information security program from the ground up for a federal agency.
Career highlight: Receiving formal recognition from Recovery Board Chairman Earl Devaney and former Federal CIO Vivek Kundra for my work on migrating Recovery.gov to a secure public cloud infrastructure.
Your advice for a government IT wannabe: Be innovative but realistic. Nothing is more counterproductive than implementing cutting-edge technology only to realize that it is too convoluted, too expensive to maintain or, worse, introduces unintended challenges or vulnerabilities.
What you enjoy most about working in government IT: Identifying creative IT solutions that enable efficiency and agility without compromising an agency’s security infrastructure.
Three favorite job-related apps: Recovery.gov HD, neu.Annotate PDF, Dual Browser Free
Dream non-IT-related job: Personal trainer and naturopathic nutritionist
Read the next Rising Star profile or view the full list of winners.