New York CIO has summer plans for state’s new cybersecurity center

The cybersecurity operations center that New York State and City officials opened earlier this year in Brooklyn will spend the next few months honing its practices and standards so it can meet state CIO Angelo “Tony” Riddick’s goal of making it an industry-leading operation, Riddick told StateScoop recently.

“One of the key things we’re going to be doing in the summer is developing and refining processes so it’s not just a one-of-its-kind operation, but that it sets the standard in the United States,” Riddick said during an interview earlier this month at the National Association of State Chief Information Officers midyear conference.

The Joint Security Operations Center opened in February with much promotion from Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams. And while it’s not the only cybersecurity enterprise in the country that marshals state and local resources, Riddick said New York’s approach gives it an edge.

“Here’s our advantage,” he said. “We’re going to be working with those governmental agencies sharing with them the data we have and taking lessons learned and looking at the patterns they’re providing to us so we can use this data correctly and make our cyber approach pervasive anywhere.”

With the Brooklyn cybersecurity center filling out, Riddick said he can now look to longer-term projects like a strategic plan for the New York State Office of Information Technology Services.

“I want to take my technology roadmap” — a five-year planning document that, he said, includes projects like multi-factor authentication and artificial intelligence — “and build that into my strategic plan so we have meat on that bone and not just a pie-in-the-sky vision.”

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