Navy CIO Jane Rathbun Wins 2nd Straight Wash100 Award for IT & Cybersecurity Leadership Excellence
Executive Mosaic is pleased to announce that Jane Rathbun of the Department of the Navy has won the Wash100 Award for the second straight year. The Wash100 Award is a prestigious accolade given out annually to the 100 most influential and impactful members of the government and government contracting industry in recognition of their achievements and in anticipation of future contributions.
Leading the Navy Into the Digital Era
Rathbun currently serves as the DON chief information officer, a position she has held since 2023. In this capacity, she works to improve the department’s IT portfolio, ensure the alignment of IT and cyber priorities with those of the Secretary of the Navy’s and advocate for technology modernization, including in the areas of cybersecurity, zero trust and the cloud.
Commenting on Rathbun’s latest win, Jim Garrettson, CEO of Executive Mosaic and founder of the Wash100 Award, said, “Jane is leading the Navy’s charge into the digital era, shaping its information superiority strategy and modernizing enterprise IT. The distinguished CIO is spearheading major initiatives like the advancement of zero trust through Flank Speed and the streamlining of identity services across the DON. Like the most notable Wash100 winners, we’ll only truly grasp the breadth of her influence in the years to come.”
Select Jane Rathbun as your favorite 2025 Wash100 Award winner at Wash100.com! Voting closes on April 30, with the winner of the popular vote competition to be announced soon thereafter.
IT Services & Data Security Milestones
With Rathbun’s leadership, the DON achieved multiple IT and data access and security milestones through 2024.
In May, the DON formally designated Naval Identity Services as its enterprise IT service for identity, credential and access management — a key component of zero trust architectures. NIS was to initially provide ICAM capabilities to unclassified Navy shore users. Secret, Marine Corps and afloat/tactical use cases would be covered in a future expansion.
“Making NIS the enterprise service for ICAM is a significant step to achieving the goal of the DON’s Capstone Design Concept for Information Superiority, which is to securely move any information from anywhere to anywhere, to help the Department of the Navy achieve a favorable financial audit opinion, and to comply with Congressional and Department of Defense Chief Information Officer requirements to deliver a zero trust implementation plan by 2024,” Rathbun said regarding the development.
In August, the DON CIO issued the second version of her organization’s Information Superiority Vision. Whereas the first ISV focused on the modernization of collaboration tools, the innovation of connectivity technologies and processes and the updating of cybersecurity approaches, ISV 2.0 focused on the optimization of an agile and resilient environment, the securing of data, systems and networks, and the transformation of the DON into an organization whose decisions are driven by data.
In October, the Flank Speed cloud service completed the second round of its security assessments and demonstrated full compliance with all 91 target zero trust activities and 60 out of the 61 advanced zero activities. Flank Speed is the DON’s Impact Level 5 unclassified implementation of Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365.
The capability was launched in 2021 using a greenfield approach, that is, implemented from scratch without having to integrate with legacy systems. Rathbun said this approach was driven by a need to deliver a collaboration and communications platform that aligned with zero trust principles while meeting the demand of telework brought about by COVID restrictions.
“The implementation was a real change in how we deliver and operate capability, tightly partnering between the resource, requirements, acquisition and cyber operator communities,” Rathbun added.
And in December, two more naval enterprise IT services were designated by the DON CIO. Naval Enterprise Service Desk was deemed the enterprise IT service for service desk capabilities and support while COSMOS was deemed the enterprise IT service for Amazon Web Services GovCloud for DON research, development, test and evaluation missions requiring the acquisition and consumption of cloud services.
“Enterprise information technology services are a huge force multiplier: these services allow our entire enterprise the ability to do more for less with greater security, quality and speed,” Rathbun had commented.
Cybersecurity Workforce
In addition to articulating the DON’s information superiority vision and providing technological capabilities meant to benefit the whole enterprise, Rathbun is also working to ensure that her organization employs a workforce capable of confronting the challenges posed by an evolving cyber environment.
Rathbun said during an event in March 2024 that the hiring of cybersecurity employees is a priority.
“In my role as the CIO, getting the right workforce — who really understands this environment and understands how to work and improve the control and management of data from a security perspective — is critical,” Rathbun said, adding, “We are beefing up our cybersecurity officers and enlisted workforce.”
Moving Information From Anywhere to Anywhere
Rathbun’s initiatives will undoubtedly help realize her organization’s goal of being able to “securely move information from anywhere to anywhere.” Achieving this is especially critical in a security environment where the success of Navy personnel, warfighters or otherwise, is determined increasingly by the safe and reliable access to data.
Rathbun’s ability to guide her organization to address these challenges is the kind of leadership the Wash100 Award celebrates.
Don’t forget to vote for Jane Rathbun as your esteemed 2025 Wash100 awardee at Wash100.com!