With his credentials, James F.X. Payne probably could have gone anywhere for a job in which to apply his security and networking expertise. He chose Telcordia, which named him last week as senior vice president and general manager of national security and cyber infrastructure in its Advanced Technologies Solutions department, because he considers Telcordia, through its history, to be the architect of the U.S. telecom infrastructure. And when it comes to securing government networks, the kind of centralized and standardized operations Telcordia designed are needed more than ever.
Payne has been a leader in federal communications issues for the last decade, serving on presidential advisory committees. He served as an advisor in the Clinton administration and was chair of the operating committees of President Bush’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee and served on the NTIA Bush Task Force on “Interdependency Between Telecommunications and Power.” Prior to coming to Telcordia, he was president of Federal Telecoms at Bechtel National Inc. and before that was senior vice president and general manager of Qwest Communications’ federal government market. He spoke with B/OSS editor Tim McElligott about his new role at Telcordia.
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| James F.X. Payne, Telcordia |
Payne: As you know, the government has put a terrific amount of emphasis on national security. Telcordia also is really putting an emphasis there and I will be leading that effort on national security. I think the leadership [of the country] really has to shift back to this concept of a central vision and architecture. Too much has been built in different directions over a variety of media and not enough of it has been planned according to a central mission.
But now, even the government is calling for an architectural vision, General Blair, from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) this past week issued his own press announcement1 warning that the infrastructure of the government is highly dependent upon the Internet, which has an infrastructure that is vulnerable and not reliable.
The founding fathers of the Internet – and I know many of them personally – never meant to make this everything to everybody. It was a research network for researchers. Now, we are spending $76 billion a year on infrastructure and each year it becomes more and more vulnerable.
Something has to change. The current model has to evolve. And it appeared to me as I looked across the landscape at who is in the best position to effect that change and I think it’s going to be Telcordia. They will have a major role it in.
