Skip to main content
OmniSOC news Indiana University

OmniSOC Closes 2024 by Welcoming Four New Members

Posted on by stikku

OmniSOC is proud to announce the addition of 4 new member institutions, closing 2024 with a significant milestone: 20+ higher education institutions, 5 NSF facilities, 2 regional networks & Federal research agencies now rely on OmniSOC to enhance their cybersecurity defenses. The inclusion of these institutions not only expands OmniSOC’s capabilities but also brings valuable expertise and perspectives that support our mission to protect higher education and the critical research it conducts.

“This has been an exciting year for OmniSOC. It’s been a pleasure to welcome our four newest members, and to begin looking forward to 2025.” said Susan Sons, Executive Director, OmniSOC. “As our community grows, so does our ability to address emerging cybersecurity threats, support our members in maturing their cybersecurity program, and bring new capabilities to the important work of protecting higher education and open research.”

Welcome to Our New Members!

We are pleased to introduce the following institutions as the newest members of the OmniSOC community

OmniSOC Member Institutions

We understand the unique cybersecurity needs of higher education institutions. Our members include small and large colleges and universities, research and education networks, and research facilities and projects. OmniSOC also supports the nation’s greatest research through ResearchSOC, the NSF Research Security Operations Center.

Learn more about our members and their commitment to cybersecurity

As we welcome 2025, we extend our gratitude to all our members for their trust and collaboration. Together, we’re building a stronger, more resilient higher education cybersecurity community.

About OmniSOC

OmniSOC is higher education’s only collaborative, multistate security operations center (SOC). By providing 24/7 network monitoring, threat intelligence sharing, and proactive cybersecurity solutions, OmniSOC reduces the time from threat detection to mitigation. These efforts help members stay ahead of cybersecurity threats while supporting some of the nation’s most critical research initiatives.

OmniSOC Con 2024: Reserve your seat today

Posted on by gmoore

OmniSOC Con 2024 is March 26-28, and it’s packed with incredible sessions, workshops, panel discussions, and networking. Registration is filling up, so register today to save your seat.

The conference is open to all higher education and research security and technology professionals such as CIOs, CISOs, CTOs, senior directors, directors of information security and information technology, and OmniSOC member senior security staff.

  • Explore more than 20 workshops and sessions, including three panel discussions.
  • Customize your conference experience to suit your interests.
  • Connect with fellow attendees over dinner on Wednesday night at the famous Fogo de Chão, courtesy of Verkada.

Learn more and register

Welcome University of California, Santa Cruz

Posted on by gmoore

“I look forward to our partnership with UC Santa Cruz and helping them in their fight against cybersecurity threats,” said Susan Sons, executive director of OmniSOC. “By partnering, our aim is to more quickly be aware of cybersecurity threats anywhere and mitigate the risk for all members with a much faster response.”

About UC Santa Cruz

The University of California, Santa Cruz is a public research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge of the coastal community of Santa Cruz, the campus lies on 2,001 acres of rolling, forested hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Home to more than 19,000 students, UC Santa Cruz is making a profound academic and societal impact.

Read more

Welcome Lehigh Carbon Community College

Posted on by gmoore

LCCC the first community college to partner with OmniSOC

Lehigh Carbon Community College (LCCC), which serves three counties in eastern Pennsylvania, has partnered with OmniSOC, the shared, collaborative higher education security operations center (SOC) led by Indiana University. OmniSOC provides 24/7 network security monitoring for its networks, conducts proactive threat hunting, and cybersecurity advisory services.

“Lehigh Carbon Community College is pleased to be the first OmniSOC community college partner,” said Josh Mitchell, CIO / CISO of LCCC. “Cybersecurity is a strategic priority of the college and this partnership will be key in our efforts. We look forward to building a strong relationship with the OmniSOC community for the benefit of all our students and educators.”

“We welcome LCCC to the OmniSOC family of higher education institutions and research facilities,” said Susan Sons, executive director of OmniSOC. “We believe we are better together. By partnering, our aim is to more quickly be aware of cybersecurity threats anywhere and mitigate the risk for all members with a much faster response.”

About Lehigh Carbon Community College

Founded in 1966, Lehigh Carbon Community College is a designated Hispanic-Serving Institution, with more than 27% of the student body identifying as Hispanic/Latino. The college serves nearly 9,000 credit and nearly 3,000 noncredit students from Lehigh, Carbon, Schuylkill and surrounding counties in eastern Pennsylvania. LCCC offers two-year associate degrees, certificate and specialized diploma programs, and workforce training and has more than 90 programs of study. Classes are offered at the main campus in Schnecksville and sites in Allentown, Tamaqua and Lehigh Valley International Airport, as well as online.

Read the full news release

Welcome Purdue University

Posted on by gmoore

Purdue has renewed its partnership with OmniSOC, the premier higher education security operations center.

Founded in 1869, Purdue University is a member of the Association of American Universities, as one of the country’s top research institutions. Purdue’s system-wide options include distinct educational opportunities for students throughout the state and across the globe. One such example is The Data Mine, an interdisciplinary living-learning community that prepares students to solve today’s toughest challenges with data analysis.

“As a founding member of OmniSOC, Purdue is thrilled to once again engage with the organization and our peer institutions to proactively mitigate cybersecurity risk to our campus communities,” said Ian Hyatt, vice president of information technology and chief information officer at Purdue University. “There is strength in numbers, and this collaboration empowers us to respond to cyber threats with the necessary speed and agility.”

“We welcome Purdue to the family of OmniSOC members that include higher education institutions and research facilities,” said Susan Sons, executive director of OmniSOC. “As state universities in Indiana, IU and Purdue have a long history of collaboration despite being rivals in athletics. As we collaborate with Purdue and our other members from first awareness of cybersecurity threats, we are able together to mitigate risk for all members with a much faster response.”

Susan Sons named executive director for OmniSOC

Posted on by gmoore

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 IU’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.”

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.

Virginia Tech joins OmniSOC

Posted on by gmoore

Virginia Tech has partnered with OmniSOC, a shared, collaborative higher education security operations center (SOC) led by Indiana University (IU). OmniSOC provides 24/7 network security monitoring for its networks, conducts proactive threat hunting, and cybersecurity advisory services.

OmniSOC launched in 2018 as a first-of-its-kind higher education SOC. Today, OmniSOC is higher education’s only collaborative, multistate SOC, the only collaborative SOC supporting National Science Foundation research, and the only SOC with a multistate institutional data-sharing agreement for researchers.

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, better known by the informal name Virginia Tech, is a public, land-grant, research university with a main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia, educational facilities in six regions statewide, and study-abroad programs. The university fulfills its land-grant mission of transforming knowledge to practice through technological leadership and by fueling economic growth and job creation locally, regionally, and across Virginia.

Susan Sons is executive director of OmniSOC.

“We welcome Virginia Tech to OmniSOC membership,” said Sons. “Cybersecurity collaboration is increasingly being valued by institutions like Virginia Tech. Together we can share awareness of a cybersecurity threat anywhere and mitigate it everywhere.”

About OmniSOC

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 ResearchSOC, 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.

Join us Aug 4 for a ResearchSOC webinar

Posted on by gmoore

You are invited to attend a ResearchSOC webinar: Effective Cybersecurity for Research on August 4 at 2pm ET.

What: Webinar | Effective Cybersecurity for Research
When: August 4, 2pm ET
Where: Zoom (register below)

Abstract
The tension between cybersecurity and researchers has long hampered attempts to secure research. It is also why institutional cybersecurity efforts in academia have been confined to the most sensitive research. The status quo has persisted for other reasons as well, for instance the complexity of the research environment, but latest developments in the regulatory and cyber threat landscape are quickly changing the status quo. Funding requirements scoped beyond individual awards and newly evolving threats are pointing to a future where securing research holistically is no longer optional.

This webinar is an overview of the recently published white paper, “Effective Cybersecurity for Research,” by William Drake and Anurag Shankar. The white paper describes an approach to cybersecurity for research that is showing great promise in breaking the security versus research impasse. A product of years of effort at Indiana University, it focuses exclusively on the researcher and the research mission, reduces the cybersecurity and compliance burden on the researcher, and aims to secure all research. It has been stress tested on campus, with success evidenced by researchers embracing it voluntarily and research being accelerated measurably.

Join us Thursday, August 4 at 2pm ET.

Register

The white paper is available in the EDUCAUSE library >

 

Webinar | Proxywar-e: detecting malicious code in websites

Posted on by gmoore

What: Webinar | Proxywar-e: detecting malicious code in websites
When: June 23, 2pm ET
Where: Zoom (register below)

You are invited to attend ResearchSOC’s first webinar of the summer: Proxywar-e: detecting malicious code in websites on June 23 at 2pm ET.

Abstract
For the past two years, Duke faculty member David Hoffman, students, and the IT Security Office have partnered with Chris Olsen and the Proxywar-e team to develop a solution to:

  • know and mitigate digital attacks targeting Duke
  • automatically stop attacks
  • inform digital entities enabling the attackers via 3rd-party code
  • understand and stop the digital attack vector’s impact on our network and endpoints
  • simplify attribution for digital attacks

Join us Thursday, June 23 at 2pm ET to learn about the project overview, the data collected, and other trends and insights the effort has generated. Register in advance below.

Register >

DeSales University joins OmniSOC

Posted on by gmoore

DeSales the latest university to partner with premier higher education security operations center

DeSales University has partnered with OmniSOC, a shared, collaborative higher education security operations center (SOC) led by Indiana University (IU). OmniSOC provides 24/7 network security monitoring for its networks, conducts proactive threat hunting, and cybersecurity advisory services.

Located in Center Valley, Pennsylvania, DeSales is a private, faith-based institution with an enrollment of about 3,100 students. US News and World Report ranks DeSales in the Top 100 in Regional Universities North, #49 in Best Colleges for Veterans, and #39 in Best Value Schools.  The DeSales Bulldogs compete in the NCAA Division III Middle Atlantic State Collegiate Athletic Conference (MAC).

Mark Albert is chief information officer at DeSales.

“We are excited to have OmniSOC as our new security partner. It is important to engage with an organization that understands the cybersecurity needs and concerns specific to higher education,” said Albert. “OmniSOC will know when DeSales is experiencing a threat but also when there are academic activities such as students in the Cyber Security programs learning ethical hacking practices. This balance is important to reduce the university’s cybersecurity risks while continuing to provide our students with a thorough education.”

Skip to toolbar