Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano will remain in the same post as President Obama begins his second term, a White House official said Monday, according to an article from the Washington Post.
Napolitano had planned on staying, and the administration confirmed it today. While not unexpected, the article says, her reappointment means that most of Obama’s first-term Cabinet will begin the second term unchanged.
A former Arizona governor, Napolitano may play an important role in Obama’s push for immigration legislation, which is a high early priority for the administration, the article says.
Napolitano has also stated last year that cyber attacks by China and other countries are one of the nation’s “most rapidly-evolving and most serious set of threats.” She also has said that Homeland Security has increased cyber security personnel by 500 percent in the last few years.
Cyber attacks threaten critical infrastructure and human lives, and could cause “massive economic damage or massive displacement of persons, or massive interference with national security,” she says. Napolitano also spoke on the subject at the 2012 ASIS International conference in Philadelphia.