Georgia hires National Guard IT chief as new CISO

The Georgia state government hired David Allen, a former chief technology officer for the state’s National Guard, as the new statewide chief information security officer this month, the Georgia Technology Authority confirmed to StateScoop Wednesday. Allen, who spent a decade as a deputy CTO and then IT chief for the National Guard, succeeded former CISO Stanton S. Gatewood, who resigned in February after three years leading the state’s cybersecurity office.

Stanton Gatewood (LinkedIn)

Stanton took the CISO job in February 2016, capping a four-decade career that included five years as the CISO of the University of Georgia and seven as the top information security official for the University System of Georgia, which encompasses all 28 of the state’s public four-year colleges and universities. Before UGA, he also worked for four years as the CISO at the University of Southern California.

As Georgia’s statewide cybersecurity chief, Gatewood most recently played a role in the development of the Georgia Cyber Center, a sprawling $100 million facility in Augusta that opened last July and is filling up with academic, government and private-sector organizations working on information security.

“Together, we will develop a cyber-workforce equipped with the education and real-world practice required in a rapidly changing world,” Gatewood said in 2017.

Allen, Gatewood’s successor, led the Georgia National Guard’s cybersecurity operations during his decade in military service, which included a December 2011 deployment to Afghanistan, where he oversaw communications for the Army’s Kabul Base Cluster, a group of five installations around the Afghan capital.

Before his time with the Guard, Allen spent three-and-a-half years as an enterprise resource planning project manager for the poultry producer Wayne Farms, and six years as a project manager with BellSouth. He holds master’s degrees from DeVry University and the U.S. Army War College.