Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger has appointed Michael Watson chief information officer (CIO) of the commonwealth and head of the Virginia Information Technologies Agency (VITA).
Watson is a familiar face at VITA, where he has been deputy CIO and chief information security officer since 2011.
During that time, Watson led deployment of VITA’s zero trust security strategy and framework, according to his LinkedIn account.
“This initiative involved rearchitecting network security, implementing continuous verification protocols, and integrating advanced threat detection tools to ensure security measures aligned with modern cybersecurity best practices,” he said.
Also at VITA, Watson was senior manager of IT risk management from 2010 to 2011, and director of security incident management from 2007 to 2010.
Watson succeeds Robert Osmond as Virginia CIO. Osmond recently left the position after being nominated to become Delaware’s next CIO.
