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.