Scott Tambert is the Chief of Institutions of Higher Education Cyber Compliance Branch at the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Federal Student Aid. He is also a lecturer at The George Washington University in Network Security, where he makes technology understandable for students. Prior to joining FSA, Scott served as a University Information Technology (IT) Director and as an Information Security Officer (ISO) in healthcare.
FSA’s IHE Cybersecurity Division is responsible at the federal level for improving information security at 6,000 universities, colleges, and trade schools. The division provides incident response, and actionable, proactive threat information from federal law enforcement and intelligence communities to the National Critical Infrastructure Education subsector. IHE Division Coordinates with the National Security Council (NSC), the National Security Agency (NSA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Executive Office of the President/Office of Management and Budget (EOP/OMB), as well as the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to protect Federal Tax Information (FTI). They collaborate with the U.S. Department of Education on K-12 and P-20 cybersecurity.
The IHE Cybersecurity Division delivers compliance guidance and government oversight through outreach, communications, and collaboration. They oversee Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) audit remediation for schools. They publish a cybersecurity newsletter with timely and practical guidance for 20,000+ information technology, compliance and leaders in higher education. They also champion Cybersecurity Awareness Month, Identity Management Day, and Privacy Week.