【1977 Archives】

Former New York City Mayor977 Archivesrecent Donald Trump superfan Rudy Giuliani has finally been blessed with a government job -- the small fruit, perhaps, of spending 2016 praising the president-elect at every opportunity.

The job is not quite a job, really, but hey. Giuliani, after apparently being considered for secretary of state, will instead be an informal cybersecurity advisor to the Trump administration.

“This is a rapidly evolving field both as to intrusions and solutions and it is critically important to get timely information from all sources,” Trump's transition team said in a statement announcing the position. “Mr. Giuliani was asked to initiate this process because of his long and very successful government career in law enforcement and his now 16 years of work providing security solutions in the private sector.” The release also says Giuliani will help Trump conduct meetings with leaders of private companies that have faced cybersecurity challenges to help build government policy.

For Trump, Giuliani as informal cybersecurity advisor makes a ton of sense. First, it gives Giuliani ties to the administration going forward, something Giuliani has appeared to want. Second, it allows Giuliani to remain in the private sector, which is something he indicated he wanted to do, at least publicly. Third, Giuliani runs a management consulting firm called Giuliani Partners, which has a branch called Giuliani Security and Safety. Trump has played up his desire to merge American business and government, and this gives him a chance to do that.

It also opens Giuliani up to a slew of ethical questions that have become par for the course for many people associated with the next presidential administration.

His firm has not responded to requests for comment about whether Giuliani's circles of influence in government and business could lead to conflicts of interest.

The website for Giuliani Security and Safety exists as a branch of the site for Giuliani Partners, but it doesn't describe the company or its dealings in anything more than generic business jargon.

"Giuliani Security & Safety offers corporations, individuals, and governments a comprehensive range of security and crisis management services," the site says. "The firm’s domestic and international experts possess a broad range of experience in law enforcement, crisis management, life safety, intelligence gathering, internal investigations, forensic accounting, and security design and architecture."

Those experts don't appear to be listed on the site. Under "leadership," the website offers only an unattributed quote, with two side links to biographies of Giuliani and John Huvane. The latter, who spent more than two decades with the New York City Police Department, was director of security for Giuliani's 2008 presidential campaign. He is now CEO of Giuliani Security and Safety.

The site also doesn't appear to provide any indication as to who they work with. For some reason, its homepage is a map of the globe on which a list of nations scrolls ever downward. Keeping with the generic theme, under "services," the site says "Clients include: governments, global corporations, energy industries, law firms, financial institutions, and universities among other organizations." The site's "news" section gives a more day-to-day picture of Giuliani and Huvane's activities, and indicates that the firm is advising the governments of Colombia and El Salvador on how to handle gangs. Cybersecurity, however, is not prominently mentioned.

A 2007 article from the Washington Post about Giuliani Partners didn't mention cybersecurity, but did mention the firm helped a "confessed drug smuggler ... ensure his security company could do business with the federal government."

Ultimately, the company's cybersecurity dealings, to the extent that they exist, remain unclear.