Renita M. Rhodes

Renita M. Rhodes, Senior Security Analyst on the Cyber Risk Management team at a financial institution where she began working in February 2018. She acts as the assistant privacy leader for the security department, performs vendor security assessments, privilege user monitoring, and cybersecurity governance. She is currently responsible for the development of Insider Threat Program to proactively identify, mitigate, and prevent internal data theft, misuse, other factors related to data protection. She worked as an Adjunct Professor at Maryville University during the Fall 2019 and Spring 2020 semesters teaching Cyber Law, Policy, and Compliance. Before joining this financial institution, Renita has worked close to 20 years in both the private and federal spaces. Renita has worked as a Sr. Consultant at Scott Air Force Base and a Sr. IT Auditor for the USPS Office of Inspector General. One of her notable audit assignments that hit US news was the audit of the Postal Service National Change of Address Program where she assessed whether security controls adequately protected the confidentiality and integrity of customer data for over 40 million Americans address changes. As part of this audit she reviewed the Postal Service vendor contracts, US Privacy Law, state data protection and breach notification laws, and compared US laws against international privacy laws.

She has worked for Fortune 500 and 100 companies such as The Boeing Company, Northrop Grumman Information Technology, Inc., and Enterprise Rent-A-Car as a senior software engineer and an application security administrator developing PeopleSoft database applications for both the Human Capital Management and Financial Management systems. Renita worked on the now defunct Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) Defense Integrated Military Human Resources System (DIMHRS) project where she developed HR and Payroll applications for all active and retired military personnel in all US military branches. She has also interned the US Army Corps of Engineers, Hewlett-Packard/Agilent Technologies, and the Federal Aviation Administration where she performed web development, help desk support, and data analytics. Throughout her career, she has received several awards. Two of the most notable awards were the Federal Enterprise Solutions Team Achievement President’s Award for development work performed on the SPAWAR DIMHRS project and the CIGIE Award for Excellence, Audit for the Review of the Postal Service Controls Over the Premium Forwarding Service – Point-of-Service Retail System audit, a project she led, beating out other federal government agencies for using data analytics to unearth fraud.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Information Systems from Tennessee State University (TSU), a master’s degree in Information Management from Washington University in St. Louis, an IT Security certificate from St. Louis University, and participates in relevant continuing professional cybersecurity training. During her time as a graduate student she published a whitepaper entitled “Developing Dynamic PeopleSoft Field Security Applications: A PeopleSoft Developer’s Guide.”

Renita is a mother of a one and a Detroit native. She is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. and mentors a current TSU student majoring in Computer Science with an interest in Cybersecurity as part of the UNCF – Tennessee State University Mentoring Program.