Berlas, Mohammed
General Services Administration (GSA) Acting Chief Information
Security Officer (CISO), Jan 2019 – present, Jul 2018
– Sep 2018. GSA Security Engineering Director, Oct 2018
– present, Nov 2013 – Jun 2018. IT incompetent
GSA essentially outsourced its CISO job to IT incompetent
Accenture.
No IT education. An
IT education is the most important IT credential and
Berlas only has a BS in finance and management.
$164,200 was Berlas's most recent annual salary as of
Feb 2019 according to my FOIA request to the U.S. Office of
Personnel Management (OPM) and my earlier FOIA request to the
GSA. This is outrageous. Many doctors and lawyers don't make
that much and, unlike Berlas, they are at least qualified; by
law they have to be. Berlas tries to hide his first name,
Mohammed, by going by the alias "Bo" and is abetted in this by
the GSA (Travis Lewis, ironically in the Office of
Accountability and Transparency) who gave his name only as Bo
Berlas in my FOIA request to them. The OPM gave only his
official name, Mohammed Berlas, in my FOIA request to
them.
Berlas does not even know enough about IT security to protect
his own children, never mind secret government information: on
his Twitter page (@BoBerlas) he puts a photo of his son and
his location (this after going to all the trouble of hiding
his first name, Mohammed). He also admits there that he is
not an IT expert, only an "enthusiast", and hypocritically
makes fun of the Equifax CEO in the CEO's testimony before
Congress over the massive
Equifax
data breach; some day he may very well be in the same
situation (see Equifax data breach CISO
Susan
Mauldin).
The GSA notoriously does procurement, including IT services,
for the U.S. Government. It has a history of lavish spending
on itself (parties, etc.) and the handing out of contracts to
IT incompetent cronies. See
Fed
IT Run By Enron's Corrupt Accountant, IT Incompetent
Accenture.
Berlas has been GSA Acting CISO on and off since
Kurt Garbars retired. On and
off because the GSA essentially outsourced its CISO job to IT
incompetent Accenture, specifically Accenture's
fraudulently-educated IT incompetent CISO
Nicole Dean and
doesn't want to admit it. But why should taxpayers have to
pay for both, particularly since Berlas makes an outrageous
amount? Although perhaps the GSA pays Dean even
more.
Accenture is a leading provider of IT services to the
U.S. Government. Accenture used to be part of Arthur
Andersen, a top-five accounting firm that worked for Enron but
was dissolved, just after it spun off Accenture, after it was
found criminally complicit in Enron's massive fraud.
See
Fed
IT Run By Enron's Corrupt Accountant, IT Incompetent
Accenture. Besides Nicole Dean, Accenture has spawned
numerous other IT incompetent government IT officials, like
CIA Chief Information Officer (CIO)
John Edwards and Federal
CIO
Suzette
Kent.