Professional Conferences Inspire Professional Growth
Information Security Office Presents at Educause Cybersecurity and Privacy Professional Conference 2023
Cybersecurity and privacy are things none of us should take for granted. Our Information Security Office (ISO) team will tell you it’s an ongoing, ever-changing struggle to stay one step ahead of the bad actors out there just waiting to steal your identity or personal information. Keeping the UArizona community informed about the latest information technology threats means their taking advantage of opportunities for professional development such as the Educause Cybersecurity and Privacy Professional Conference 2023. This year’s event theme was “Reach for the Sky: Developing Stellar Staff and Operations to Reach New Heights in Higher Education Cybersecurity and Privacy.”
At the conference, which was held in Bellevue, Washington the early May, ISO team members shared the expertise and hands-on experience that led the University of Arizona to unify in our vigilance and crisis response to cybercrime predators.
Teresa Banks, manager of Information of security compliance programs, and Steve Hicks, principal information security architect, shared their presentation “Lasso the Moon: Achieving Federated Cyber Risk Management in Higher Education,” with a national audience. Their topic spoke of pioneering the ISO developed, RMaP, an automated federated cyber-risk management platform.
Teresa explains, “The presentation had a fun twist. Since Steve and I are big fans of the Ted Lasso show, we incorporated some of Ted's folksy approach to team building into our presentation, which provided a great way of explaining how we have built the program over the past four years.”
They shared how gamification of the annual risk management cycle incentivizes security plan completion and recognizes achievements of campus units and their risk managers. Unique to the higher education environment, ISO has developed an all-encompassing education and training process that includes RMaP team building, the UASecure application, and gamification, resulting in heightened security awareness and timely reporting to university leadership.
“Getting to meet with and talk to other universities who are also working on their risk management programs provided us with great ideas to continue building our program. Lessons learned from others can be incredibly helpful!”, said Teresa.
Conference opportunities for professional development are important for keeping staff current as security risks evolve. It’s also a great networking opportunity to connect with other cybersecurity professionals and in this instance, a meet-up of our remote colleagues. Teresa shares, “We were fortunate to have not only all members of the ISO Governance, Risk and Compliance team present (Brendan Miller, Steve Hicks, Wendy Epley, and me), but Lanita Collette, our Chief Information Security Officer, was also present, as well as Sonya Lowry, a former team member and developer of UASecure.”
Communications & Marketing Team Brings Back Conference Learning
Marketing & Communications staff participated in the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) Western Division Conference 2023 held at La Paloma Resort in April. The University was represented by over 40 attendees which brought a lot of opportunity for networking with peers in Southern Arizona as well as communications professionals from the West Coast.
Kelly South and Mary Veres from the UITS Marcom team brought back many learning opportunities to share with the team and learned about an exciting new event management app called, Whova. As a result, this year’s IT Summit will be hosted using the same online engagement app. Whova includes session scheduling, session presenter’s bios and attendee meet-ups and forums, and a gamification leaderboard where online social engagement counts points for prizes. The true benefit of the app is in its attendee engagement through social activities before, during and after the event. Surveys, session Q&A, photo sharing, floormaps, polls and more got lots of use by over 300 event attendees.
Perhaps the most insightful session during the three-day event came from the Keynote “The Art & Power of a Good Story” presented by Imari Tuakli. Among other good tips, he spoke about putting the “why” before the story and being your authentic self to engage the reader. Another excellent session dealt with ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence tools that are the future of the communications and public relations industry.
Trellis Team Attends 2023 Salesforce Education Summit
Kim Winchell, Meredith Aronson, and Sarah Wieland represented the University of Arizona at the 11th annual Salesforce Education Summit in Dallas, Texas. The University’s Trellis CRM implementation is run on Salesforce, so it was important for Trellis team members to attend to soak up the latest news and learnings from Salesforce. Since this was the first time the Salesforce Education family came together since 2019, there was energy and excitement that hit Dallas in April. Attendees came from across the world for two jam-packed days featuring more than 60 sessions.
A big topic of conversation was the reimagined Education Cloud, which Salesforce announced on March 15. Education is one of multiple industry verticals Salesforce serves, and the company is leaning into a new capability model that provides an institution-wide approach to common services. Lego has served as a common analogy for building on the Salesforce platform: You can buy a box of Legos and start from scratch, or you can buy a kit with instructions.
Read more on the Trellis Webpage.
UAIR Presents at the 20th Annual Higher Education Data Warehousing Conference
UAIR is constantly looking for opportunities to share the work being completed at the University of Arizona and in the UAIR department with colleagues at other higher education institutions. It is through professional development opportunities such as the HEDW 2023 Conference that our staff can learn and grow when it comes to data management best practices.
In April, the Higher Education Data Warehousing Forum (HEDW) hosted their 2023 Conference in Ogden, Utah. HEDW is a network of higher education representatives dedicated to sharing knowledge about data management, best practices, data warehousing designs, institutional reporting strategies and more. This year, UAIR had the opportunity to represent the University of Arizona at HEDW, not just as attendees but as conference presenters, to share insights on how strengthening the institution’s data community can be fostered through campus partnerships.
Mark Ray, Student Data Architect, and Eddie Caratachea, Assistant Director of Administrative Reporting & Analytics, recently presented to a group of colleagues and higher ed professionals, discussing UAIR’s recent collaboration at UArizona as well as UAIR’s best practices in data governance and analytic services.
“I am always grateful for the opportunity to represent the University of Arizona at a national conference! It was great engaging with our peers and learning about the innovative work happening across the field of higher education.," said Eddie.
Their presentation discussed partnerships with campus entities who are consistently leveraging data to empower decision-making and policy changes at the university. For example, UAIR’s ongoing improvements to the reporting around the student lifecycle has created an opportunity to collaborate with offices such as Faculty Affairs and the University Center for Assessment, Teaching, and Technology (UCATT). Additionally, the university’s institution-wide initiative to implement and transition to a new financial reporting system via the Financials Modernization project has been a key source of campus partnership.