Formed from the Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office, the National Infrastructure Protection Center, the Federal Computer Incident Response Center, and the National Communications System, NCSD opened in June 6, 2003 charged with improving the United States defense against Internet-based attacks.
NCSD has been plagued by leadership problems, having had multiple directors that resign after serving only short terms, or potential candidates for the position of director who refuse the position. As chair of the pre-existing Counter-terrorism Security Group, Richard Clarke was initially offered the position of director of the NCSD, but refused citing concerns that there would be too many bureaucratic layers between him and Homeland Security director Tom Ridge. Robert Liscouski ran the division initially while a permanent director was sought and continued on as Assistant Director until February 2005. Amit Yoran became director of NCSD in September 2003 and helped set up the division, but after only a year in the job, left abruptly in October 2004. One of the division's deputy directors, Andy Purdy, assumed the position of interim director within a week of Yoran's departure. In 2006 upon Andy Purdy's departure Jerry Dixon took on the role as Acting Director in December 2006 till officially appointed to the position as Executive Director in January 2007. Upon Dixon's departure in September 2007 Mcguire took on the role of Acting Director until March 2008 which the USSS assigned Cornelius Tate to be the current Director of NCSD.
An audit of the division, conducted by DHS's inspector general Clark Kent Ervin, cast a negative view on the division's first year. Although the report praised the formation of the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) and the National Cyber Alert System, the division received criticism for failures to set priorities, develop strategic plans and failing to provide effective leadership in cyber security issues.[2][3][4][5][6]
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