The continual emergence of technologies has infiltrated government and industry business infrastructures, requiring reforming organizations and fragile network infrastructures. Emerging technologies necessitates countermeasures, commitment to cybersecurity and information technology governance for organization's survivability and sustainability. The purpose of the qualitative exploratory case study was to analyze the critical inclusion of information assurance professionals in the organization's strategic plan by senior leadership to advance the integration of cybersecurity and information technology governance, resulting in diminishing network vulnerabilities. Interviews were conducted with 10 information assurance professionals and 10 supervisors of information assurance professionals from March Air Reserve Base, California. The findings generated six themes with meaningful interdependencies between information technology organization, information technology governance, cybersecurity, network management, security management, and senior leadership involvement. Results of the study concluded government organizations need a National Defense Cybersecurity Strategy (NDCS) to protect the nation's interest. The NDCS would establish meaningfulness to the interdependency relationship between senior leadership and the IT organization in government organizations. The NDCS would establish meaningful interdependent relationships between the organizations' strategic planning and information assurance professionals' expertise in cybersecurity and IT governance. Recommendation to leadership was to develop and deploy NDCS to federal organizations to assist in contributing to transferability, and recruitment and retention of IA professionals to provide standardization, controls, and to increase the body of knowledge. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]