Beckstrom was formerly director of the US National Cybersecurity Center (NCSC).
He has also been a trustee of the Environmental Defense Fund and the Jamii Bora Trust, a micro-lending group in Nairobi, Kenya, and has written four books.
His appointment was made by the ICANN Board and announced at the end of the 35th ICANN meeting in Sydney, Australia, which was held last week.
It comes as ICANN prepares to launch a big expansion of the domain name system with a potentially unlimited number of new top-level domains.
