The Practitioner

James McIntosh Senior SA&A Practitioner & Security Architect

James McIntosh is a veteran Security Architect with over 25 years of IT experience, specializing in the secure deployment of federal cloud systems. He holds a Level III Top Secret clearance and has acted as a lead resource for the Department of National Defence's Joint Defence Cloud Program.

James is not just a theorist; he led the first Cloud SA&A in the Department, establishing the processes and evidence reporting standards for Azure, AWS, and GCP.

Selected Achievements:

• Rapid Authorization: Oversaw the security design and deployment of "Defence 365" (Office 365/Azure) to 110,000 users during the COVID-19 response, meeting Protected B standards.

• Policy Leadership: Co-led the security team in assessing mandatory controls for Protected B (PB-M-M) environments, liaising with SSC, TBS, CSE, and CCCS.

• Identity Management: Designed federated Identity Management approaches to support secure cloud services and external partners.