Bloomington Leader

Susan Sons named executive director for IU-led cybersecurity operations center

Susan Sons has been named executive director for OmniSOC, the shared cybersecurity operations center for higher education and research led by Indiana University (IU). She reports to Aaron Neal, IU deputy chief information officer.

Sons has been serving in an interim capacity since July 1. Previously, Sons was a chief security analyst at Indiana University's Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research (CACR). She was also the deputy director of the Research Security Operations Center (ResearchSOC, now part of OmniSOC) and supported Trusted CI, the NSF Cybersecurity Center of Excellence.

“Since her interim appointment last July, Susan has demonstrated strong leadership in advancing the OmniSOC organization,” said Neal. “Susan and the entire team continue to provide excellent service to our OmniSOC clients as interest is growing throughout the higher education and research community. We are excited about soon welcoming new members to OmniSOC and are encouraged by its continued growth.”

Susan Sons combines more than 18 years of experience providing strategic IT vision and cybersecurity leadership for multiple high-profile organizations; serving as a chief information security officer to develop best-in-class information security strategies; facilitating secure and scalable IT systems that raise the bar in organizational efficiency and performance; and carefully shaping the processes and policies that sustain an effective, secure, and highly productive organization.

“I look forward to OmniSOC continuing to grow and to constantly mature our services to support these important science and higher education members,” said Sons. “Cybersecurity is one of those things that's never done and is constantly an evolving process. I'm really lucky that we have such a fantastic team and that I walked into an already well-run operation.”

About OmniSOC

OmniSOC is a 24/7 cybersecurity operations center for higher education and research led by Indiana University. OmniSOC operates in conjunction with the formidable capabilities of the Global Network Operations Center (GlobalNOC) housed at Indiana University. It also makes use of threat intelligence insights from the Research and Education Networking Information Sharing and Analysis Center (REN-ISAC) housed at Indiana University. OmniSOC also partners with counterparts in Australia, Canada, and the UK in a cybersecurity threat intelligence-sharing partnership.

OmniSOC was founded by members of the Big Ten Academic Alliance to reduce the time from first detection of a security threat to campus mitigation. Today, OmniSOC’s members include higher education and research institutions of all sizes, both public and private. OmniSOC, through its ResearchSOC service, supplies cybersecurity for the nation’s greatest research.

OmniSOC is a member of the Indiana University cybersecurity community, which includes the Research and Education Networks Information Sharing and Analysis Center (REN-ISAC) and the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research. See leading.iu.edu for more information.

Original source can be found here.