Cybersecurity specialist Carole House returns to White House

A cybersecurity expert returned on Monday to the National Security Council (NSC) as special adviser for cybersecurity and critical infrastructure policy, two years after departing the White House agency.

Carole House, who also has worked in senior cybersecurity roles at the Department of Treasury and the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), brings significant cybersecurity expertise to the NSC in the months leading up to November’s election.

House, a military veteran, made the announcement in a LinkedIn post in which she quoted a slogan of her former Army unit, the 4-2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team, saying of her new role, "To the Objective!"

A cryptocurrency expert, among other things, House served as the NSC’s director of cybersecurity and secure digital innovation from 2021-2022. Prior to that she worked at the Treasury Department as a senior cyber and emerging tech policy officer for nearly three years.

House also currently chairs the Technology Advisory Committee for the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission; is an advisory board member to the Digital Dollar Project,  focused on responsible innovation in digital money and central bank digital currency infrastructure; is a senior research scholar at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology; and is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

After leaving the National Security Council in 2022, House joined the tech-focused venture capital firm Terranet Ventures as an executive.

House’s appointment comes two months after Travis Berent, the NSC’s former director for cybersecurity policy and incident response, departed for a job as director for incident response strategy at Microsoft.

Another former White House official, Chris DeRusha, has taken a job as Google Cloud's director of public sector compliance, the company said Tuesday. DeRusha was federal chief information security officer for about three years, ending in May.