In December 2019 the newly elected president Gotabaya Rajapaksa appointed Brigadier Suresh Sallay the former head of Directorate of Military Intelligence as the head of SIS after his predecessor Maithripala Sirisena and then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe weakened the intelligence agencies allowing the 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings to happen. Sallay is the first director of the SIS to come from the Military Intelligence instead of the Police.