The new Director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement, Robert Khuzami, has as much or more on his plate these days than anyone in Washington, D.C., so I was very grateful when he agreed to spend some time on Friday speaking to me about his new position and his plans for the Division of Enforcement.

Khuzami told me that the SEC's Director of Enforcement position was one he has had an interest in dating back to his days as an AUSA in the Southern District of New York (from 1991-2002), where he was the chief of the securities fraud unit. He was intrigued, then, when the "stars aligned" and he was contacted by a mutual friend of his and Mary Schapiro's about interviewing for the position.

Asked about the morale in the Division upon his arrival last week (on March 30), Khuzami stated that the people in the Division take their jobs very seriously and cannot help but hear and consider the criticism leveled against them. He added, however, that it's his impression that the current challenging situation at the SEC translates into a real desire and receptivity on the part of the staff to do whatever is necessary to improve the Enforcement Division. He emphasized that be believed the most important pieces of doing that—a talented, committed group of people and an institution with a tradition of excellence—were already in place, and that he was quite optimistic it would be achieved.

As a former federal prosecutor, Khuzami has experience working alongside the SEC in parallel securities fraud investigations. He said that he considers the relationship between the SEC and federal prosecutors to be "symbiotic" and beneficial to both organizations, and he fully expects the Enforcement Division to try to expand and deepen this relationship under his leadership. He has not yet had an opportunity to review Commissioner Aguilar's recent proposal that Congress should provide the SEC with criminal enforcement powers where the Department of Justice has declined to take action.

I asked Khuzami for his thoughts on how the SEC could best ensure that that the people in Enforcement have the necessary level of sophistication on financial and market issues. He said that he was considering numerous approaches to this, and that changes in unit structure, the use of working groups, specialized training, and other ideas were all possibilities.

Finally, I asked Khuzami whether criticism that the Enforcement Division was too "reactive" was fair. He noted that the nature of any policeman-type role is often necessarily reactive, but added that there always needs to be a great emphasis on shutting down a fraud as early as possible. He stated that on his first day at the Commission, he told the staff that he wanted them to keep four goals in mind at all times: to be "strategic, swift, smart, and successful." Shutting down frauds early, he said, hit on many of those "four S's."