Cyxtera hires Peace as federal arm's COO

Secure IT services company Cyxtera has hired three-decade defense and intelligence agency veteran Cheryl Peace as chief operating officer for the company’s federal business.

The Cyxtera Federal Group launched in the summer of last year to offer secure data center and cyber services to federal agencies. Led by former Federal Chief Information Security Officer Greg Touhill, the group also provides fraud prevention and authentication services to government customers.

Peace was more recently a senior executive at the National Security Agency and has held other management and technical roles across the intelligence community and Defense Department.

She is also a former White House director for cyberspace security and in that role helped coordinate cyber issues across federal, state and local government agencies. Her tenure there included work to help spearhead the creation of the Homeland Security Department’s national cybersecurity division.

Prior to that, she was principal deputy director of the FBI’s National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force and facilitated collaboration across 20 agencies in the defense, intelligence and law enforcement communities.