- Capital One announced that CISO Michael Johnson is stepping down and will be succeeded by Mike Eason
Capital One CISO Michael Johnson is stepping down following a major data breach in July. Going forward, Capital One named Mike Eason as an interim CISO and Head of Cyber. Eason was previously the CIO for the Commercial Bank at Capital One.
“Michael Johnson is moving from his role as chief information security officer to serve as senior vice president and special advisor dedicated to cyber security,” confirmed a Capital One spokesperson via TechCrunch.
Johnson is going to remain at Capital One as an advisor and is going to focus on the company’s ongoing responses to the data breach. In the meantime, Capital One is also searching for a permanent replacement from external candidates.
The data breach included names, addresses, postal information, phone numbers, email accounts, dates of birth, income levels, credit limits, and credit scores.
Back in August, The Wall Street Journal had reported that Capital One cybersecurity employees were not happy with Johnson’s performance in the position. The employees believed that Johnson’s history in federal government positions did not mesh well in the private sector.
Before joining Capital One, Johnson worked in IT and security for the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Energy, and the White House. The Capital One data breach impacted 106 million customers. And 140,000 Social Security numbers and 80,000 linked bank account numbers were leaked.
The hacker was identified as former AWS employee Paige “erratic” Thompson. Bruce Sussman of SecureWorld put together a comprehensive overview of how Thompson was able to get into the Capital One servers.
Featured image: Capital One
