Three of the FBI’s top cybersecurity officials are retiring as the country is reaching an “unprecedented” era of global hacking threats, according to a Thursday Wall Street Journal report.
Scott Smith, assistant FBI director who heads the cyber division, will leave this month for the private sector. His deputy, Howard Marshall, left recently for Accenture, a consulting firm. Both of them were supervised by David Resch, executive assistant director of the FBI’s criminal, cyber, response and services branch, who is also retiring.
In addition to those three, per the Wall Street Journal, Carl Ghattas, executive assistant director of the FBI’s national security branch, is also leaving and Jeffrey Tricoli, a senior FBI cyber agent who spearheaded a task force investigating the Russian election tampering, left recently.
A number of different factors have reportedly been associated with the turnover, including big pensions, low morale from constant Trump administration attacks and lucrative private sector jobs, especially in tech and cyber fields.