Miller has accepted a position as director of government affairs for Washoe County, according to his post Tuesday on LinkedIn. Washoe County is the second most populous county in the state, home to more than 486,000 residents and stretching from Lake Tahoe to the Oregon border.
“After two incredible years with the State of Nevada leading some of the most complex cyber and physical security challenges, I am heading back to my roots,” Miller wrote on LinkedIn.
The Washoe County Sheriff’s Office could be immediately reached for comment.
The state has not yet named an interim deputy director of the Office of Information Security and Cyber Defense (OISCD).
“Regardless, continuity is in place,” Michael Hanna-Butros Meyering, chief communication and policy officer for the Governor’s Technology Office, said in an email. “The work of OISCD continues under the leadership of the Governor’s Technology Office and State CIO Timothy Galluzi, with the support of the office’s cybersecurity leadership team with newly appointed State Chief Information Security Officer, Bert Carroll.”
Miller played a strong role in helping to develop the statewide Security Operations Center (SOC), which remains a priority for the agency and continues to move forward, officials said.
He was the inaugural leader of the Office of Information Security and Cyber Defense (OISCD) when it was established in July, and developing the SOC was one of his first goals. A cybersecurity veteran with experience at the U.S. Army and U.S. Cyber Command, Miller credited his federal government background with helping him merge organizational policy and strategy to confront real-world situations and threats.
Miller has been focused on goals like reducing long-standing cybersecurity vulnerabilities in state systems by prioritizing industry standards like multifactor authentication, privileged-access management and encryption-at-rest for sensitive data.
The state was hit with a significant cyber attack last year, in which some data was moved outside of the state’s network. Nevada CIO Tim Galluzi talked about how trust empowered the state’s response to the incident at last week’s National Association of State CIOs Midyear Conference in Philadelphia.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with comments from the Nevada Governor’s Technology Office.
