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"Joyce is three months past his detail of a year and is deciding
to return to NSA," the official said.
His departure follows that of his boss, Tom Bossert, who oversaw
Joyce's work on cyber security and was pushed out of the
administration last week.
Another senior U.S. official said Joyce was leaving the White
House of his own volition and not being forced out by President
Donald Trump's new national security adviser, John Bolton, or
other personnel. The White House has seen a raft of departures
since Bolton began his new role earlier this month.
Joyce is expected to continue in his role for about another 30
days, DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told reporters during a
media roundtable at the RSA cyber security conference in San
Francisco.
Nielsen said Bolton will select Joyce's replacement, calling his
departure a "natural inflection point when you have a new
national security adviser."
Joyce was well respected by cyber security experts and widely
credited with steering the Trump administration toward trying to
impose harsher penalties on foreign adversaries in response to
cyber attacks.
The announcement of his departure came just hours after he and
briefed reporters on a global cyber attack targeting routers and
other networking equipment. They blamed Russian
government-backed hackers for the campaign against government
agencies, businesses and critical infrastructure operators.
Joyce was scheduled to speak at the RSA conference this week but
cancelled, prompting speculation that he would be the latest
official to leave the White House.
"It's a huge loss for the country," said Curtis Dukes, former
head of cyber defense at the NSA who worked with Joyce. "He was
very effective in that role."
Dukes, now vice president at the Center for Internet Security,
said Joyce was an asset for all federal agencies and was
instrumental in revamping the way the U.S. government decided
whether to disclose or exploit cyber vulnerabilities discovered
by spy agencies.
Robert Lee, a former U.S. intelligence officer and president of
the cyber firm Dragos, said Joyce was technically competent and
that many of the previous White House cyber coordinators had
backgrounds ill-suited for the job.
"He'll be missed in the position but hopefully set a standard
that future appointments to the position will follow," Lee said.
(Reporting by Dustin Volz; Writing by Doina Chiacu; Editing by
Phil Berlowitz and Lisa Shumaker)
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