Scott McCarthy

Scott McCarthy serves as the Chief Security Officer (CSO) (Acting) for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). As CSO, he is responsible for overseeing CISA’s internal security and threat management programs through a multi-layered approach of integrated security programs, inspections, and investigations.

McCarthy is responsible for the strategic direction of the Office of the Chief Security Officer, ensuring a safe and secure work environment, and promoting organizational excellence, integrity, and accountability to stakeholders. He provides executive leadership to the OCSO executive officer and the Associate Chiefs for Security Programs, Personnel Security, Enterprise Security, Internal Affairs, and Threat Management.

Prior to this position he served as the Executive Officer for CISA OCSO, Director of Personnel Security for DHS NPPD, Operations Manager for a government contractor, and Regional Manager for the National Capital area and prior to that, the East Coast area of operations overseeing investigations for the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and Defense Counterintelligence Security Agency (DCSA). He is a US Marine Corps veteran with multiple overseas deployments, one being with a Marine Expeditionary Unit (SOC). He was stationed with HMH-462 in MCAS Tustin, MCAS Miramar, and MCAS Futenma, Okinawa Japan.

His military and civilian awards include the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal, Sea Service Deployment Ribbon W/1*, Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal, Humanitarian Service Medal, Meritorious Unit Commendation, Certificate of Appreciation. The 2021 DHS Security Team of Excellence award, and the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director’s 2021 Partner award. 

McCarthy provides almost 30 years of combined military, government contractor and Federal service experience. This professional experience is comprised of large-scale personnel and security operations, and national level coordination of programs and workload. He has trained to implement data driven approaches towards planning and executing, and long-term analysis of macro and metadata to assess trends to performance outcomes. He has extensively studied in all areas of leadership and team building, to include graduate level course work through Harvard Business School.