DOD’s David McKeown Accepts 2023 Wash100 Award From Executive Mosaic’s Jim Garrettson

Executive Mosaic CEO and Wash100 Founder Jim Garrettson formally handed a Wash100 plaque of recognition to 2023 inductee David McKeown, senior information security officer and deputy chief information officer for cybersecurity at the Department of Defense.

McKeown is a first-time awardee of the Wash100, an annual selection of public and private sector leaders with significant contributions to the government contracting industry. He was included in this year’s roster in honor of his efforts to implement cybersecurity programs such as zero trust approaches in DOD’s systems. Read McKeown’s Wash100 profile here.

McKeown’s leadership is critical in the achievement of the agency’s Zero Trust Strategy and Roadmap, which aims to retire traditional network security measures by the end of fiscal year 2027.

He also pledged to help non-federal organizations comply with the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Special Publication 800-171, which contains security standards and practices for managing controlled unclassified information in non-government networks.

“I’m kind of keen on establishing some sort of cloud services that either achieve many of the 110 controls in [NIST SP] 800-171 or all of them that industry partners can consume to store our data and safeguard our data without us having to go out onto your network,” McKeown was quoted as saying at a cyber event.

His expertise is stemmed from more than 35 years of service at DOD, 27 years of which were spent in the U.S. Air Force.

Executive Mosaic congratulates McKeown and looks forward to his continued contributions to the GovCon industry in the year ahead.