New Appointment of UF Information Security Manager

Charles Frazier, Vice Provost for Information Technology

It goes almost without saying that security of information resources has grown to a major concern across this country. This is certainly nonetheless the case in public universities and it may even be that the issue is especially critical in these institutions. Whatever the case, recent incidents of security breaches at some large prestigious public universities should remind us all of the importance of sound security policies and practices. UF has had an information security program and policy for some time and we have been fortunate to have the benefit of attentive staff and effective practices across campus. But two recent audits and internal reviews have led me to conclude that we need to raise our security program to a higher profile and a higher level of operation.

To this end, starting a couple of weeks ago, a new university-wide Information Security Manager (ISM) was appointed. The new UF-ISM is Ms. Kathy Bergsma. Kathy had previously served as the Network Services Information Security Manager. She will now take on university-wide information security responsibilities (UF-ISM) and will report directly to Mr. Tim Fitzpatrick, Director of the UF Computing and Network Services (CNS) unit. Kathy’s initial work plan will be to follow-up on the recently completed university-wide security risk assessment and to work directly with unit personnel to address the findings of that report. As a more general and long-term focus, her job will be to promote campus-wide security awareness/compliance through outreach and consultation.

In addition to Kathy Bergsma’s appointment as UF-ISM, the Information Security sub-committee that has reported through the Information Technology Advisory Council – Network Infrastructure (ITAC-NI) committee will be augmented with additional members and reformed as an ITAC level committee called Information Technology Advisory Council – Information Security Management (ITAC- ISM) committee. Ms. Bergsma will serve as chair.

I hope all unit heads will welcome Kathy to this new job and that you will also work with your own IT professionals to enhance security awareness and best practices in information security management.