Former NSA Director Keith Alexander recently told a cybersecurity event at the University of Maryland that low morale is driving the NSA’s best and brightest to the public sector. Salaries that can reach into the seven figures also attract professionals away from government service. Alexander is retired military, served as the head of the NSA from 2005 to 2013, and is now the CEO of a private firm in the cybersecurity field.
The remarks were reported by CyberScoop on December 6, as part of a piece examining the morale issue at the National Security Agency. The story reports that retention of cyber-tacticians has worsened in the last several years and in the last twelve months in particular.
One anonymous source described the agency as a place where “roughly 20 percent of the workforce doing 80 percent of the actual work.” That source described a bureaucracy where individuals “retire in place.” The effects upon morale are extreme.
The NSA and the Brain Drain
NSA Director Mike Rogers has repeatedly called attention to NSA recruiting efforts and efforts to halt the “brain drain.” Alexander, in his remarks, blamed the media for a negative public image for the NSA. Inaccurate reporting portrays the agency as a villain, intercepting every phone call and reading every e-mail.
Sources tell CyberScoop that the current reorganization plan, NSA21, may be affecting morale and retention more than Rogers or Alexander would like to admit. The plan has brought the offensive and defensive cybersecurity groups into a rough partnership for the first time. This appears to be resulting in a clash of workplace cultures and competing skill sets.
Tailored Access Operations is the offensive side of signals intel, with some of the best hackers in government. The Information Assurance Directorate is the defensive side. Both have been combined into a joint effort that seems to be suffering some birthing pains.
The new administration is less than two months from taking office. It has vowed to stop the revolving door between government and private industry. There are certain to be changes throughout the government and in the intelligence community. For now, the employees of the NSA can just watch and wait.
